


I'd rather have you

by Jean____Ralphio



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cas is a hitman, Dean's an FBI agent, Established Relationship, F/M, Kinda?, M/M, mob!au, mr and mrs smith!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23682055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean____Ralphio/pseuds/Jean____Ralphio
Summary: Dean has the perfect life; a loving boyfriend, a beautiful home, a job he... well, a job he leaves at the door. Being an FBI agent is dangerous, so dangerous that it's safer if Cas, his English-teacher civilian boyfriend, is best left in the dark about what Dean does all day. Cas thinks he's a mechanic, but the reality is very different. It's not healthy. But it works and Cas stays safe. Or so Dean thought, until a sting on the malicious Masters family led to him encountering Cas tied up in a back room. It turns out Cas is about as much an English teacher as Dean's a mechanic; he's the hitman for the very powerful mob family, the Novaks.It all goes to shit from there.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 60
Kudos: 237





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you 5ever to my amazing betas - Tumblr users @gracelesstars, @studio-hatter and @whosthathufflepuff. You guys are phenomenal and I love you.  
> Find me on Tumblr if you want! @Jean----Ralphio

Dean stretched as he clambered out of the Impala, one hand reaching back to work at the kink knotted in his lower back. Sitting hunched over his desk all day was a bitch even when he wanted to be doing it. Paperwork sucked and being an agent for the FBI meant more paperwork than he’d ever anticipated, unfortunately. He shook his shoulders loose as he climbed up the stairs to his front door, eyeing the way the wind was wreaking havoc with the wicker porch swing and the burgundy flowers in their boxes along the windowsills. Cas had only planted those a few months ago, he was going to be so pissed if they got ruined now.

When he reached the door he tapped in the day’s pin code onto the sensor and waited for the whir and click of the lock to release. Cas had insisted on installing the high-tech security feature when they’d bought the house; Dean had been a little surprised, but hadn’t complained. He'd install ten if it meant keeping Cas and their home safe. Proximity to Dean automatically meant danger, not that Cas could possibly know that. Dean rubbed at his tired eyes as he pushed the door open, the tension lifting clean off his shoulders, evaporating out of his skin as soon he was over the threshold. He dropped his car keys in the bowl by the door and called out “Angel?” as he toed off his shoes, even though he could already hear Cas in the kitchen at the other end of the house.

“In here,” Cas called back; two corners and down the short hallway – there he was, standing at the stove frying what smelled like onions and garlic in a pan. He looked like pure sin in an indecently tight blue t-shirt and a pair of Dean’s jeans, for some reason, that were threatening to slide right down off his hips, his dark hair rumpled like he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly.

“Wind’s messing up your primroses out there, baby. I’ll figure something to shield them this weekend,” Dean told him as he moved through the open-plan room, shrugging off his leather jacket and dumped it on the dining table. Cas’ phone, which lay on the counter alongside a pile of folders that were probably book reports from his students, was playing ‘Talk’ by Kodaline. Cas was singing along quietly under his breath, though he cut off with a little hum when Dean pressed himself to his back. He wound his arms tight around Cas’ torso, his fingers making a beeline for the hem of his shirt.

“How was your day? How are things at the garage?” Cas murmured, turning his face into Dean’s neck for a moment before pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.

“Backbreaking and boring. If I see one more shredded timing belt this week, I’ll kick the owner into the Hudson. All I wanted all day was to come home to you,” Dean kept his tone bland and neutral. The last part was the truth, at least.

Because Cas doesn’t know he's dating a lie. Cas could _never_ know what Dean really does, who he really becomes when he steps outside their front door each morning.

Being the spouse to a secret agent as high up in the FBI as Dean would mean having a target on the back a mile wide. Dean couldn’t risk Cas like that, not his safety and not his knowing the truth. Being so dishonest with the love of his life had always felt wrong, and there was a specific part of Dean’s brain that had to be steeled stronger and stronger with each passing moment in order to bear it. With every lie about where he was going or where he’d been, the guilt thickened.

He loved Cas more than anything else in the world, and ensuring his safety would always come first, far beyond letting him in on something as inconsequential as what Dean did all day. Besides, did it really matter? So Dean pretended a job he didn't have, was it that big of a deal...?

Because Cas, Dean’s loving, sweet, perfect, English-teacher boyfriend, thought he was a mechanic. He thought the false bottom in the boot of the Impala was for tools and spare parts, not guns and SWAT gear. He thought the week Dean had spent lain up in hospital last month had been an extended visit to his family back in Kansas.

It was just safer that way.

So, Dean went to work in the morning and spent his day investigating cases, clearing dens of iniquity and chasing down criminals. Then he’d come home, leave his veneer of a cool, calm and collected special agent at the door and turn back into Dean Singer, Cas’ kinda goofy boyfriend, who was oh so very civilian with his love for classic rock, lazy Sundays in bed and anything deep-fried, that it was almost painful.

But.

There were times when the lines blurred, Dean couldn't pretend they didn't; couldn't pretend that he didn't wonder if the version of himself who Cas knew wasn’t a cover so much as the real him. The agent left on the doorstep, at his desk at the office, in the trunk of the Impala alongside his riot shield and a spare shotgun or three was starting to feel more and more like the fake.

Because Cas’ smile wiped all thoughts of cases and criminals and drug busts away; Dean forgot himself, his lies, his cover, what was real and what was made up, whenever he looked into Cas’ stupidly blue eyes.

They’d met three years ago, after finding themselves sitting side-by-side at the bar of a dingy dive near Dean’s cover workplace, Benny and Bobby’s garage. Cas had been alone, stood up (who the hell asked a guy as perfect as Cas to somewhere as shoddy as the Roadhouse, anyway?) and Dean had been angling to drink away the stress of a shoot-out that had gone for two hours and killed three of his team that morning.

Cas had smiled crookedly over at Dean as he had all but collapsed onto the stool next to him, waving at Ellen for alcohol ASAP.

Dean had shot the pretty guy in the trenchcoat a smile in return, and hadn’t really been able to look away ever since.

The rest was history.

The onions were starting to caramelize in the saucepan on the stove, but Dean was far too invested in tasting the skin on the back of Cas’ neck. He let his fingers ruck up the t-shirt, traced ab muscles, swept over Cas’ belly button, teased the strip of skin above the waistband of his own pilfered jeans.

“Dean,” Cas groaned his name, gently trying to ease away. “I’m cooking, baby!”

Dean reached around him and switched the stove element off, then pulled Cas back firmly against his own body so that he could feel how hard Dean already was for him. "You were cooking," he corrected. "Now you're not." Groaning again, Cas rocked back against him, hips rolling as if on autopilot. Then he abandoned his wooden spoon and turned in Dean’s arms to kiss him fiercely, coaxing Dean’s mouth open with his tongue.

“You’re not hungry, then?” Cas asked, when they eventually broke apart for air, only for Dean to immediately start trying to get Cas out of his shirt.

“I’m starving, angel, been thinking about you all day,” Dean gritted back, manhandling Cas all the way past the dining table and down onto the living room couch. Cas laughed as fell he back onto the brown leather, then wriggled out of his jeans and underwear in one go, rucking them down to his ankles as he reached up to pull Dean down on top of him.

“Good thing I’m right here, huh? So why don’t you show me what you were thinking about?”

Dean couldn’t get enough. From the soft look of delight in Cas’ eyes when Dean rubbed his spit-wet fingers inside him, which he replaced a few minutes later with his aching cock, to the way his chest heaved as Dean worked him closer and closer to climax, moving harder and faster with every encouraging shout, to how Cas’ lips parted with a soft cry of pleasure as he came, Dean stroking him to completion in time with his own thrusts.

Cas was all perfect.

Too perfect.

They didn’t get round to eating dinner until pretty late that night.

*

Dean’s alarm blared him awake at 5am the next morning, the tune of ‘Thunderstruck’ jolting through his senses. He turned it off, jabbing blindly at his phone screen before he reached out to find Cas’ bare back. He smoothed his palm in broad strokes down the warm skin as an apology, to try and soothe Cas back to sleep as his angel shifted and stirred. Once his breathing was slow and even again, Dean kissed his shoulder and forced himself out of their warm bed.

Today would likely be rough; a sting hit they’d been planning for a long time against the Masters family was finally in motion, and Dean's adrenalin was already started to kick in. The warm spray of the shower eased a little of the tension he’d woken up with. Cas’ lovely naked body pressing up against his back as he stepped into the shower behind him did the rest.

“Oh, my angel... Baby, you didn’t have to get up.”

“I missed you already,” Cas mumbled into his shoulder blade, brushing his cheek over Dean’s wet skin.

“Baby, it’s OK. You can go back…”

The rest of Dean’s words were cut off by his own groan of delight; he let his head fall back on Cas’ shoulder as the warm hands on his chest slid down and began stroking him to hardness.

Cas made a noise of pleasure of his own against Dean’s neck as he fondled him, one hand moving to grip his hip, squeezing at the bone under his skin.

“Angel,” Dean moaned again, his brain fogging up with delight.

He let out a cry of disappointment when Cas let him go, but it morphed into a sob of relief when Cas only turned him and pressed him back against the shower wall. With a smirk, Cas kissed him once then sank slowly to his knees at Dean’s feet, dragging his mouth and hands down Dean’s torso as he went.

Dean was ten minutes late to HQ for the briefing and didn’t care one bit. Some things were worth being torn a new one by Henriksen, and Cas’ mouth was definitely one of them.

Once Victor had finished yelling at Dean for being late on such an important day, he’d hauled him back to the briefing room and all but shoved him down into a seat next to Sam.

Dean’s little brother winced in sympathy, a look that quickly turned into an eyeroll when Dean simply beamed at him, completely unperturbed, and already eating a doughnut from the plate in the centre of the table.

“Dean, what the hell, you –“ Sammy probably would have started scolding him too, if Dean hadn’t thrown the last bite of his doughnut at his head.

“That’s enough, you two!” Henriksen snapped, hands on his hips as he took his place at the front of the room.

“I didn’t do anything!” Sam wailed, as Charlie and Jody, the other two squad leaders on the Masters sting, exchanged glances and hid their smirks behind their coffee mugs.

“I said enough!”

Sam bitch-faced at Dean, who took the opportunity to grab two more doughnuts and mash them together.

“Look, Sammy! Doughnut burger!”

“Winchester!” Henriksen barked, so Dean finally decided to go easy on him and settled back to listen.

The bust they were making today was a big one, and it had taken months of preparation. The Masters family, who had carved out a niche for themselves in weapons supply for the black market, were exponentially dangerous. Undercover intel had tracked them to a warehouse down at the docks last night, and Dean was itching to get his hands dirty, to get his blood pumping, to get in a fight. Rats like those that made up this family didn’t stay in one place for too long, and if the FBI lost them now who knew when they would pin down so many members in one location again.

So at midday, their four 8-man teams would converge on the warehouse. The Winchester brothers would lead their two teams inside, with Charlie’s and Jody’s people covering the outer perimeter of the building in case any escaped or reinforcements showed up.

“You’re a little too excited about this, as per usual,” Sam muttered to Dean later, once they were in the armoury and pulling on their SWAT gear.

“And you’re never excited enough!” Dean shot back as they grabbed their weapons, their teams falling in around them as they swept out the door side by side. He was already dreaming about how he was going to surreptitiously celebrate their inevitable sucker punch to the Masters family later this evening. He was still thinking of 6-pack of beer in his fridge and the handsome man that would be waiting for him at home as their transports rolled out.

*

Henriksen, who was supposed to coordinate the strike from a support van, wound up leading them on point because of course he did; the guy was physically incapable of sitting out. Dean tried not to let it grate; he was supposed to be the lead. As if to make up for the blow to his ego, it was two of his own team who took out the sentries at the front gate to the warehouse, with perfectly sniped headshots. Dean gave Jo and Kevin the thumbs up over his shoulder. He was such a good boss.

“All about that positive reinforcement,” he educated Sam as they scuttled along behind Henriksen, keeping low, their teams fanning out behind them.

Sam gave him a long look that might have been scepticism but was probably jealousy because Dean’s team was the best, and far better than Sammy’s.

Dean followed straight after Henriksen through the empty doorway into the warehouse, keeping enough of a gap between himself and his boss to ensure quiet. The small entryway held only a mishmash of chairs and a sad looking snake plant, slumped in a pot. The short corridor beyond, if their plans of the building were accurate, should open immediately right into the warehouse. Henriksen was on one knee at the corner, and he shot a quick look back at Dean to check on him before he slunk around it.

Dean took the corner slowly, keeping his shoulder pressed to it. Sam was right behind him, closer than he was meant to be, but old habits die hard. Dean dropped one hand from his gun to brush the back of his gloved fingers against his brother’s forearm, their silent code for _Be careful, be safe_.

Most of the warehouse’s inhabitants were grouped around a table, it turned out, drinking and playing cards even though it was still early in the day. As he slunk behind a metal pillar, Dean spotted Azazel, one of the kingpins, swigging on whiskey as his daughter Meg tapped away her phone next to him, her typical smirk fixed in place.

Jody’s voice was quiet in Dean's ear as she reported that her team were in position outside, covering the rear exits, and Charlie’s were on guard at the front. Dean shot a glance over his shoulder to check his own team, who were all ready and waiting, fanning out behind him. Under her SWAT helmet, he could see Jo was grinning.

Yeah, Dean was going to enjoy the fuck out of this, too.

Ahead of them Henriksen nodded to Dean once and then gave the signal, dropping his fist from where he sheltered behind a crate. With that, all hell broke loose. Shots were fired before those at the table even knew what happened; Dean shot Meg in the back of the head, tamped down on his own satisfaction at watching her body crumple from her chair, then turned his gun after a guy who was already up and sprinting towards the far end of the warehouse.

Dean took off after him, keeping his head low as more shots rang out around them. The guy overturned chairs and shoved trolleys into Dean’s path but he dodged or vaulted them with little difficulty. Dean caught him in a back room’s dead end, and a short scuffle resulted in the guy being punched in the face, disarmed and handcuffed to a metal pole.

“Enjoy yourself down there,” Dean grinned, ignoring the muttered swear words in response as he took stock of the little room. There was only one other door, which he approached with his gun drawn; it wasn't ajar and he nudged it open easily.

Dean edged through the door gun first, letting his eyes adjust to the bright light from the single bare bulb that illuminated a figure slumped in a chair. But he had to keep blinking even after his vision had cleared and he had pushed his helmet up, because the guy that lifted his head was more familiar to Dean than anyone else in the world.

It was Cas.

“You think I’m going to talk, think again you fucking… what the… Dean?!” Cas gasped, the shock evident on his face, even under his split lip and the cut over his left eyebrow that was dripping blood down his face.

“Oh my god, angel. What the hell…” Dean holstered his gun, called down his earpiece that the southern rooms were clear, but that they needed a medic. Then he skittered to Cas’ side, stroking his hair back automatically to try and comfort him, before reaching for the ropes binding him to the chair.

Cas just stared at him without moving, even once he was free.

“Baby, angel, what the… what the hell are you doing here?” Dean whispered. Had the Masters family taken him to get to Dean? But how did they know about him, how had they seen through Dean’s cover? It didn’t make any sense. He’d had a few run-ins with Meg before today, but surely he hadn’t come in enough contact with her for her to be able to unearth anything about his personal life?

Cas’ eyes flicked from Dean’s SWAT gear, over to his gun and then up to his earpiece.

“You’re FBI?”

“Yeah, baby... I can explain –“

“But why are you _here_ , Dean? How did you know they had me? Have you been keeping tabs on me all this time?” The voice, Cas’ voice, all gravel and low; Cas’s confused eyes; Cas’s body bruised and bleeding.

But it couldn’t be him, it couldn’t be _him_.

Yet he was all too real under Dean’s hands, staring up at him as if Dean had grown a second head. Cas was here, right before Dean’s eyes, wearing the same dark trousers and striped shirt Dean had watched him pull on this morning, having admired his ass the whole time as he'd dressed. This wasn’t a bad dream, it was sickening, stark reality.

“Why would I be… what are you talking about? What are _you_ doing here, Cas?!”

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Cas breathed, and yeah, no, Dean really fucking didn’t apparently.

Dean still hadn’t put the pieces together when Sam came slamming through the door; Chuck, Dean’s second-in-command, was hot on his heels. Cas flinched back from them as they barged in and Dean automatically moved to shield his love before he could help himself.

Chuck was already blabbering away, oblivious, leaning around Dean to assure Cas that he was safe now and that the medics were on their way. Dean ignored Chuck entirely, let his eyes find Sam’s, let his brother see the horror that he was feeling even though he didn’t expect Sam to understand why.

Sam’s brow furrowed and he moved towards Dean on instinct, wrapped a protective arm around his shoulders and started to guide him to the privacy of the other room. Dean shot one last look at Cas as Sam pulled him away and wished he hadn’t.

The pure betrayal in Cas’ eyes was like a physical punch to the gut, and Dean staggered a little into the doorframe; he had to let his brother help him through the door. He closed his eyes to try and block it all out as he slumped against Sam, the only thing he could think to do to try and wake himself up from what had to be just an awful, horrible, terrible nightmare.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My betas are freaking amazing and I love them!
> 
> Visit me on tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jean----ralphio

“Dean, what the fuck is going on? Talk to me!” Henriksen’s voice was low, could have even been called gentle if it hadn’t been laced with his typical do-not-bullshit-me-Winchester tone.

They were standing together on the covert side of a two-way mirror, watching Cas who was sitting in the interrogation room beyond the glass. Cas’ wounds had turned out to be mostly superficial – the Masters family hadn’t had time to get around to anything more colourful than punches – and a medic had taped up the abrasions on his face. He still looked beautiful and Dean was fighting the instinct to rush into the room to touch him, to offer comfort, to assure both Cas and himself that his angel was OK.

Dean couldn’t take his eyes off him, couldn’t align the fact that the man before them, the man he’d stumbled upon in the back room of that shady warehouse just one hour ago, was truly him, his love, his Cas. He felt like he was waiting for something to happen that would explain it all – a pin to drop, Sammy to suddenly scream ‘April Fools’, or for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind the door telling him he was being punk’d.

Dean hadn’t uttered a word since they’d left the warehouse, not since he’d watched Cas be driven away from him in the back of a cruiser. Cas had been handcuffed as soon as he’d been led outside because Henriksen had taken one look at him and known more in that second than Dean had in three years.

Henriksen had known who Cas really was.

Dean had punched the first officer that had come forward brandishing cuffs at Cas until Henriksen’s bark of 'WINCHESTER' and Sam’s arms clamping around him had put a stop to that.

He still couldn’t find the words to explain himself, even now that he was out of his gear, back in his normal clothes and had been given some time and space by the rest of the team to get his brain back online.

Sam kept tapping at the water bottle he’d shoved into Dean’s hand to try and make him drink, but Dean kept forgetting he was even holding it. Charlie tried to coax him into sipping a cup of the rank smelling ‘calming’ herbal tea she’d made him, and Jody had waved a meatball sub under his nose, but he barely paid them any attention.

Now, the four of them were clustered in the observation room with Dean. Sam was a looming giant at his back, Charlie and Jody were shooting him worried looks from their seats at the table, and Henriksen simply stood with his hands on his hips as he waited for the answers Dean didn’t know how to give.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Dean?” Sam’s tone was trying to be comforting, but Dean could hear the underling tinge of panic in his pitch. “Who do you think that man is?”

It took a few tries for Dean to get words out of his desert-dry mouth, but it was easier to pretend he was answering his little brother, not their boss.

“The guy in there is my boyfriend. We’ve been dating for three years. We live together, bought a house last June. Up until today I thought he was a civilian, but I was wrong about that, it seems. There’s been an engagement ring in my dresser drawer for six months, wrapped up in an old pair of hiking socks so he couldn’t accidentally find it. Guess I won’t be needing it anymore, huh?”

Sam was very still behind him.

“Does he know you’re FBI?” Charlie whispered, as if she were too afraid to talk too loudly.

“No. Well, now he does, obviously. But until now he thought I was a mechanic. I’ve got an iron-clad cover worked out with Benny and Bobby.”

“There’s no possible way he could know you’re one of ours?” Henriksen pushed.

“I don’t see how. My cover has been solid for almost a decade, especially to Cas. But then, what would I know? I thought his name was Casimir Wesson and that he was a middle-school English teacher!” Dean finally wheeled away from the view of Cas through the glass. Sam automatically moved with him, keeping himself hunched over his back like a protective shield, even though they didn’t touch.

“So, who the hell is he, and why did those Masters pricks have him?” Dean rubbed at his face before he rounded on Henriksen.

“Dean… His name is Castiel Novak, and he’s one of the most imperative members of the Novak family; allegedly their hitman and a very dangerous individual.”

“He teaches English,” Dean insisted weakly, now sagging back against his brother, who gripped his shoulders. “He grades papers on the couch and reads out crappy book reports at the dining table. He listens to Kodaline when he cooks and Hozier when he bakes. He’s got bookcases crammed full of all this Russian literature I can’t even read. And plants, oh my God, he buys so many, we have so many fucking houseplants everywhere! He… he…”

 _He sucked me off in the shower this morning, and I brought him off with my hand straight after, and the look on his face when he cums still gets me in the gut even after all this time_.

No. Dean can’t say that one out loud, but the heaviness settles in his chest.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Dean,” Henriksen could only shrug. “You should have declared the relationship to us as soon as you got serious. We would have vetted him; we could have saved you the cost of the house, the ring…”

A sharp look from Jody shut him up.

“There’s no point talking about what Dean _should_ have done!” Jody spat. “All that matters now is how we proceed. We made a successful hit against the Masters family today, and it’s a good thing we recovered Castiel safely. But we still don’t know exactly why they had him or what they were planning to do with him. What we _do_ know is that the Novak family are going to want him back. We have an opportunity here.”

“The Masters' would have taken him as leverage,” Charlie agreed with her, shooting a sad look at Dean that he pretended not to notice. “The same thing you’re about to suggest we do?”

Jody just shrugged, “The thing is, I don’t think we’ve got anything we can actually stick to Castiel. All we have on him is hearsay and rumour, nothing concrete. We can’t arrest a man based on his reputation. That means we can’t hold him much longer. If he’s going to be released regardless, we might as well cut ourselves the best deal possible with his family.”

“Well someone needs to get in there and get some answers about what he has on Winchester,” Henriksen turned towards Dean, but thankfully his eyes slid past him to Sam.

“Junior?”

“Yeah,” Sam squeezed Dean’s shoulders again. “I’m on it.”

Dean felt cold once his brother pulled away from him and slid from the room. He turned his eyes back to Cas, who was still staring down at the table he was seated at. It hurt afresh to look at him, but Dean was determined not to let himself pay any attention to Henriksen, who was ordering Charlie to make contact with the Novak’s while he and Jody started trying to figure out what to demand in return for their hitman.

*

“Tell me about Dean Winchester?” Sam was a professional, didn’t let his familiarity with own brother, and his own surname, slide into his tone. “Assuming that name has any meaning to you?”

He’d taken the seat opposite Cas five minutes ago, and they’d stared at each other in silence until now. Cas shook his head 'no' slowly in answer to Sam’s question.

“Dean Singer is the man I’m in a relationship with. Is it still a relationship if the whole thing is a lie? He… well I _thought_ he was a mechanic for a garage on 4th Street. I’ve been there billions of times… I… we’ve… I just don’t understand this… we… he _works_ there.”

Dean knew what he was thinking; _we fucked there last week, I spread him open on the ‘desk’ in my ‘office’ and when he came he made a mess all over my ‘papers’ and I didn’t care that Bobby damn near kicked my ass after because I fucking love him so much_.

Sam made a little hum in acknowledgement, then carried on.

“Today must have been a shock. First you get kidnapped, then Dean comes busting in with the FBI and saves you. He must have been the last person you expected to see. What do you know of his background?”

Cas cleared his throat. “Practically nothing, now that I think about it. And what I do know, I’m no longer certain is even true. He told me he dropped out of high school at 16 and got a job at the garage with Bobby, his uncle. I never knew much about the rest of his family, but I know he had a rough childhood, so I never pushed him to tell. I know his mother is dead and his father disappeared when he was very young, leaving him to care for his little brother.”

Sam, to Dean’s surprise, raised his hand.

“That would be me.”

“You?” Cas blinked. “You’re his brother? You’re Sam?”

Dean gaped at the back of Sam’s head in surprise.

“Why is he giving himself away?” He muttered to Charlie, who’d just re-entered the room in time to hear what his brother had said.

She shrugged. “Yeah, Sam sure as hell doesn’t always make the best choices. But is there really a need to preserve identities anymore, now we’re making a deal with the Novak’s? Maybe Sam wanted to give Castiel a sense of a bond forming between them, to make Castiel feel like he wanted to open up to him more? Or maybe your brother just wanted to feel a little closer to someone who means so much to you?”

“Meant. Past tense. He doesn’t mean shit to me anymore.”

“Oh, Dean...” Charlie pressed her fingers to his arm, and he ignored the long, worried glance she exchanged with Jody.

Beyond the glass, Sam was still jumping hook, line, and sinker into giving his identity away.

“For the record,” he told Cas, “I didn’t even know you existed until today. We tend to keep our personal lives as private as possible in this gig, to avoid spouses or children being targets for revenge; even Dean and I go to extreme lengths to keep each other completely in the dark. If it hurts you any less, Dean’s never met my wife. And he’s never met our baby either. Never even seen pictures, couldn’t pick them out of a crowd, wouldn’t know them if they walked through the door right now. It’s just safer.”

“The life I lead has similar rules,” Cas doesn’t smile, just drops his gaze back to the table.

“So, you’re telling me you had no clue until we lifted you from that room that the guy you’ve been in a relationship with for three years is FBI?”

“No.” Cas closed his eyes. “No, I didn’t know.”

“And as far as you are aware, he did not know until today that you’re allegedly the Novak family’s most prestigious hitman?”

“No!” Cas groaned out, thumping a hand on the table before he rubbed at his eyes. “No, I don’t believe he did. I don’t take my work home with me, so to speak. I live a civilian lifestyle when I’m with Dean. My cover as a teacher was solid. My brother Gabriel has an almost disturbing amount of fun crafting fake essays and assignments in case Dean ever happened to pick one up. We took a lot of care to keep my cover intact, all to keep Dean safe.”

“So, your family knew you were seeing him? But they never ran a background check?”

“They ran a check, yeah. It came back clean. He completely checked out; Dean Singer, mechanic at his uncle’s garage!” Cas’ voice was tinged with hysteria, as if he were as shocked as Dean by all this.

“That’s good news for us, I suppose. I’ll pass our success on to the head of covert operations. Nice to know the covers we create are so solid we can fool even the big bad Novak’s.”

Cas’ gaze hardened at the mention of his family, but Sam just carried on, “How did the Masters’ people get you?”

“They jumped me in the driveway, about an hour after Dean left this morning. I could have handled a few, but there were at least five or six.”

“With your notoriety, I’m surprised they haven't come for you sooner.”

“They’ve tried. They usually fail.”

“Not this time.”

“No,” Cas agreed wanly. “Not this time.”

Jody, who Dean hadn’t noticed leaving, popped her head around the door to the interrogation room to silently call Sam away. Dean’s brother shot one long look at Cas before he headed to the door. He was back looming behind Dean just a few seconds later, but Dean was too wrapped up in his head to acknowledge him.

God how could he have missed this?

He’d been so busy worrying about keeping his own cover protected, keeping his lies straight, that he’d never paid too much attention to Cas’ own eccentricities. He hadn't felt the need to Cas checked out when they'd started seeing each other because it hadn't occured to him that there could be anything that needed checking about the sweet, quiet man. He’d never questioned Cas’ weirdness about security; his late nights out and extended weekends away at ‘conferences’ and ‘meetings’ that Dean was now convinced were hits; the safe in the study that Dean had never bothered to even ask the code for.

“I want to talk to him,” he announced to the room.

“Is that the best idea?” Henriksen asked.

“No. Almost definitely not. But I want to talk to him.”

“I’m not sure –“ Sammy started, but Dean cut him off.

“Well I am.”

Sam followed him as he shoved his way out into the hall and was just in time to grab his arm at the door. He didn’t let go until Dean turned and looked up at him, nodding that he would be OK.

All the deep breaths in the world couldn’t steel him for this, so Dean gave up trying to breathe and just walked into the room.

Cas looked up at Dean like he didn’t recognise him, which was fitting, really, because Dean didn’t recognise him either. It didn’t matter anymore how many times they’d kissed, how many times they’d fucked, how many arguments they’ve had over who should do the dishes or who was to blame for the size of the power bill or what they should watch on TV. It didn’t matter that Cas had bought Dean the green long-sleeved henley he was wearing under his jacket or that they’d been talking a lot about getting a puppy recently.

Everything had changed.

Dean paced a little in front of Cas’ table, shooting him glances but failing to string any sentences together. Cas’ eyes followed him, but he didn’t speak either.

Dean couldn’t move past the fact that this man was a stranger and that he didn’t know a thing about who Castiel Novak really was, beyond the lies. The man he’d loved was gone and this one was nothing more than a stranger, an imposter. It was as if Cas, his Cas, his angel, had dissipated into thin air, leaving behind someone completely unfamiliar to inhabit his body, to sit here before Dean and break his heart.

Beyond that, the shock, the pain, Dean didn’t really have a name for his feelings, but whatever they were, he didn’t like it. Rage was curdling together with hurt somewhere between his heart and his stomach, and the numb of shock had settled over his brain, making it difficult for him to focus properly. He came to a stop behind the chair Sam had been sitting in and gripped the back of it firmly with both hands as he took another long look at Cas.

They were strangers now; the love of his life had been relegated to no-one, a liar, and a fraud.

“Your family,” Deans eventually said, every word enunciated slowly after being carefully chosen, a rare feat for him, “Are in the process of arranging a deal with us to let you go free. You’re very valuable to them, it seems. I’m told your brother Michael, the boss of your little band of merry mob men, referred to you as being ‘of the utmost necessity’. Remind me what it is you do that makes you so vital to your family? Because I could have sworn YOU WERE A FUCKING ENGLISH TEACHER!”

Cas didn’t flinch when Dean snapped and threw the chair at the wall, his aggression insurmountable and not feeling the slightest bit better when two of the chair-legs broke on impact. He just fixed Dean with a strange, guarded look and said, “Same as how I thought you were a mechanic?”

“You’ve been lying to me for three years!”

“Like you haven’t been lying to me too? Isn’t that half the problem here?”

“That’s different!”

“How? We used each other, Dean. We were covering for each other and didn’t even know it! God damn it, I thought…” Cas shook his head, wouldn’t look at him any longer, as if it hurt too much. “I thought you were… I thought I was safe with you. The shit I go out and do each day… coming home to you was all I had to hold me together, to keep me sane, my only happiness! You were all I had!”

“I was convenient to you,” Dean told him, bitter and seething and so fucking hurt. “I was a house and a paycheck and a warm body in your bed and a front to protect you from your enemies.”

“Not anymore, and not a very good front, obviously,” was the blithe response. “You’re mad, of course. But believe me, I’m fucking mad too. And I’m not the only liar in this room, so get off your high horse.”

“Like you have the right to be angry?!” Dean spat. “You prick!”

Never in his life did he imagine he would ever speak to Cas that way, but here he was, here they both were.

“I loved you!” He all but screamed in Cas’ face. “I love you so much, more than anything! I’m sorry if I’m having a hard time coping with all that, that life we had, that love we had, coming to an end!”

“The rug’s been yanked out from under me too, Dean! I love you too! You are my absolute world. So, don’t act like you’re more hurt than me!” Cas hissed. “Don’t act like you’ve lost more than me! Don’t act like just because you’re one of the ‘good’ guys and I’m not, that I don’t have the right to be broken about this too!”

“You’re a hitman! You kill people! You can’t possibly still have a heart! You, what… go out and shoot a mark, then come home and beg me to fuck you through the mattress, so you don’t have to think about what you just did? How could you?! How do you live with yourself?!”

“I do what I have to, for the sake of my family. Are you going to try and pretend that you’ve never killed, in your line of work, to protect people, to keep your brother safe? It's the same thing.”

“Wow, yeah, OK.” Dean refuses to think of Meg, doesn’t let himself remember watching her body slump over the table in the warehouse just a few hours ago; refuses to think of how he'd rip out the throat of anyone who ever posed any threat to Sammy. “Your brothers? Your family? Your oh-so-special family of arms traders and drug dealers? The family you go out and commit murder for? You shouldn’t be in this room. We shouldn’t be negotiating over you. You should be locked in a cell to rot! You’re a criminal!”

“If that’s what you think, then why are you here? Just to rub my nose in it? Just to break my heart even worse?”

“I’m here to tell you I wish to God we’d delayed the sting by a day. I wish to God you were still in that room getting the shit kicked out of you. I wish we hadn’t saved you. You don’t deserve it. I think its bullshit that we’re releasing you back to your family. If I ever see you again it will be too soon!”

His brother’s arm were wrapped around his chest before Dean could say anything to fuck up his own life any worse, and for the second time in one day he was hauled out of a room by Sammy while staring into Cas’ helpless eyes – his face the picture of betrayal and grief.

*

Six hours later and Dean was curled up under a blanket on the couch in his sitting room, where he’d collapsed as soon as he’d got through the front door. He simply lay there, his gaze fixed on one of the porch beams visible through the window, trying to wrap his head around how his life had completely exploded into pieces in the space of one day.

Their coverts team had been and gone, had combed through the house looking for bugs or any sort of sign that Cas had been gathering intel or information on Dean, as well as searching for any of his weapons or tools, any proof that he’d actually committed murders. They found nothing, and Bela, the team leader, gave Dean’s hand a long squeeze before she left, which he couldn’t rouse himself to even acknowledge.

It was a bit of a surprise to Dean when Cas walked in, just as it was getting dark. He looked the same as always did when he came home: beautiful, tired and rumpled in his suit. He even started to automatically hang up his tan trenchcoat by the door, before he remembered himself.

Cas wasn’t alone either; a guy lingered at his shoulder, who assessed Dean with eyes that looked almost gold in the gloom of the dark room. Cas flicked a lamp on and said “Dean,” in that chiding way that Dean had heard a million time before, which meant he was being admonished for being petulant and lying in the dark.

Dean ignored him.

Cas sighed, rubbed at his forehead in the way that signaled he had a headache coming, then dragged himself up the stairs. The guy didn’t follow, just kept staring at Dean from by the front door.

“We’ve come for his stuff,” he told Dean after a while, before he started digging in the pocket of his coat. Dean tensed, expecting a weapon, but the guy just produced a handful of loose skittles and started eating them straight from his palm.

Dean raised an eyebrow at him and got a grin that was mostly a leer in return.

Cas came clattering down the stairs and shot another long look at Dean, before he turned to the man.

“Gabriel, I think it’s best if you wait in the car.”

“You want me to leave you alone with a guy who a few hours ago told you he wished you were getting beaten up and that he never wanted to see you again?”

“… yeah.”

“Whatever, have it your way, little bro. You always do. See ya around, Dean-o,” one last withering look was sent Dean’s way, and then the guy was gone, another handful of skittles already on its way to his mouth as he swept out the door.

Cas looked down at Dean once more as he hefted his sole bag onto his shoulder, the battered leather carryall that Dean always made fun of because it looked so shabby.

“That’s it, one bag? No hidden cache of weapons to clear out? You sure you got all your blood-resistant clothing and hooded cloaks or whatever the fuck it is you wear when you kill people? Is it all crammed in there?”

Cas frowned a little. “I don’t keep much of that stuff here; my weapons are where you’ll never find them. And since I know your people have already gone through the house with a fine-toothed comb, I doubt anything else is in any danger of being discovered.”

“What was in the safe? Our team couldn’t crack it.”

“Nothing that I need anymore.”

“Great. Wonderful. Perfect. You’re all done then? Get out of my house.”

Cas sighed, “Dean.”

Something in his tone dragged Dean off the couch, to trail after him to the door before he could stop himself. Cas looked at him, one half of his face lit up gold by the glow of the lamp.

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dean muttered back, allowing himself one moment of weakness in which to reach out and let his fingers brush down the back of Cas’ neck, because he’s angry, but God is this really happening?

When Cas pulled Dean against him, he went without resisting, just let their bodies press together in the way they’d done millions of times. Cas’ breath was shaky against Dean’s ear and Dean whispered he was sorry again into Cas’ hair.

“I said so much bullshit earlier, I’m sorry. I’d never want anything to happen to you, I never wanted anything to happen to you, that’s why…”

“Why we’ve both been lying through our teeth, trying to protect each other. I understand. You’re angry and hurting. I’m angry and hurting.”

“How did this happen? Why has this happened?”

“I don’t know, Dean,” Cas sounded so tired, so sad, and all Dean could do was press his face into his neck and lose himself in the familiarity of having Cas in his arms, where he belonged. He mentally pushed agent!Dean outside to wait on the doormat and revelled in being Cas’ for the last time.

They held each other with the finality thick in the air between them. Cas rested his forehead against Dean’s but wouldn’t kiss him. Dean gazed into his eyes, tried to memorise their exact shade of blue, the feeling of holding him. He pressed Cas as tightly as he could to his chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Cas he loved him because he didn’t know what he felt anymore. The last time he’d said it had been in this same spot twelve hours earlier when he’d kissed Cas goodbye that morning, not knowing that it would be the last time.

When Cas eventually pulled away, he said nothing, just cast one last, sad look at Dean before he slipped through the door.

Neither of them said goodbye.

Dean shuffled back over to collapse back onto the couch once more and didn’t move for the longest time, just lay there staring at the ceiling, regretting not telling Cas to take the ring in its box from the drawer upstairs with him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY BETAS ARE AMAZE.  
> You guys have been so incredibly wonderful with this chapter and I'm so grateful <3

It takes a few weeks for it to sink in that Cas isn’t coming back.

When Dean’s home, during evenings and weekends, he seems to just wander about the house, feeling out of place. He finds himself picking up things at random and putting them down elsewhere just because he can; just because it might summon Cas to his side to complain that he was messing up the neatly arranged shelves or the order of the remotes on the coffee table in the living room. The house gets dirtier and smellier because Dean can’t summon the energy to clean and his diet comes to consist of toast, coffee, takeout, and beer.

He keeps up his cover, albeit half-heartedly; it’s almost redundant now that he really doesn’t care who comes after him or why. But spending a little spare time with Bobby and Benny at the garage is welcome distraction – drinking beer, shooting the shit, messing about with car engines, wrecking so many of his t-shirts with grease that he has to start wearing ones that Cas left behind.

It’s not enough, though. Dean wishes it were.

He goes to work each weekday feeling non-corporal, imaginary, like a ghost floating down the halls. Sam bitch-faces as he comes up with a billion stupid suggestions to try and get Dean out of his funk, all of which Dean firmly rejects via eyeroll; Charlie hugs him a lot, which is nice; Jody slips whiskey into his coffee.

Jody’s his favourite for a reason.

Henriksen, weirdly, handles him with kid gloves, keeps him on desk work until Dean snaps and feeds an armful of files into the shredder because he feels so stagnant, and really just wants to feel something, to push someone, to get yelled at.

Henriksen’s response isn’t to yell, but to instead hand him an actual, honest-to-God good assignment, and Dean throws himself into the stakeout with gusto.

Dean takes Chuck with him to watch the comings and goings from the nondescript little apartment in a rough part of town, allegedly the location of a sex-trafficking gang. They eat burgers in the safety of the Impala and don’t talk about anything to do with their personal lives as they take turns training binoculars on the door and windows.

Nothing happens. They don’t see a soul. There isn’t even a single light on in the apartment.

It’s the most fun Dean’s had in weeks.

He also manages to have fun shaking the tail that’s been on him since the night Cas left – almost definitely the Novak’s, using different cars to try and be inconspicuous. Dean’s daily life takes him to very few places, so he's not exactly hard to track down.

But it is hilarious to make the Novak's sweat and think they’ve lost him, which Dean does whenever he can. He takes every backward route to and from work in the Impala that he can think of, and almost always shakes them. He throws them during his evening jogs too, ducking down alleyways and taking paths through parks that are inaccessible for a vehicle. Dean’s obviously always going to go home, it’s just funny to see whichever car they’re using come careening around the corner in a panic as he drags himself, chuckling, through his front door.

He has no contact with Cas, not a single call or text. He doesn’t try to contact him either, though he opens their text thread often, just to check. The last messages are always the same ones, from the day before life went to shit.

_Baby, do we need more cereal?_

_Yeah. Frosted flakes_

_You know that crap is pure sugar, right?_

_Delicious, delicious sugar_

_Dean._

_Why don’t you try something healthier?_

_Ugh. No. Do not want._

_Don’t come crying to me when you have a heart attack at 40, baby_

_Will_

_I love you_

_I love you too_

Overall, life tries to roll on as normal, except for the massive, gaping wound in his chest where Dean’s heart used to be. He works. He works out. He eats … kind of. He sleeps, fitfully. He ignores his brother’s nagging. He refuses to think about Cas, tries to shy away from memories, from his wants and needs, from his feelings, all while drifting about their home, chasing the scent of him on their bedsheets and the clothes he left behind.

Dean doesn’t expect anything to change from the pathetic pattern he develops for himself.

Therefore, the bomb that goes off under his car one Sunday morning as Dean’s somewhere on the front path between the house and the mailbox is a pretty big fucking surprise.

The blast throws him back onto the front stairs of the house, ears ringing, vision too bright and getting brighter. He shuts his eyes against the light, but the white stays seared behind his eyelids.

When he opens his eyes again, someone is kneeling over him, and he sees a pair of anxious gold eyes that seem familiar. As he gazes up at them, he realises a disembodied voice is yelling.

“Shit! Dean! Dean, it’s OK, you’re all right, you’re safe! Uriel, call Cas! Call Michael! Uriel! Forget about the damn car, help me with him!”

Dean passes out before he can start to unscramble the meaning behind the words, sinking blissfully into the white.

*

When Dean comes back into consciousness, Sam’s face is the first thing he sees.

It’s a relief, because it instantly answers the question that Dean’s asked himself every time he’s opened his eyes since he was four years old: is Sammy OK, is he safe?

Dean looks around from where he’s laying, in the bed of a stark, white hospital room. Sam is slumped in a chair that he’s too tall for, looking uncomfortable even in his sleep. Outside, the sky is the purple-orange of dusk.

“Hey, bitch,” Dean croaks at Sam to rouse him, wincing at how ragged his own voice sounds.

Sam wakes with a start and commences fussing immediately.

“Oh my God, Dean, you had me worried!”

His hands hover over Dean’s face, his shoulders, his chest, like he doesn’t know where it’s OK to touch him. Dean saves him the confusion and takes his hand, threading their fingers together, though he’ll deny it vehemently should anyone ever find out.

“There was a bomb under the Impala, Dean,” Sam tells him, after he’s pressed the button to summon a nurse now that Dean is awake. “The whole thing got blown sky high this morning, I’m really sorry.”

“Exploded into pieces, huh? Fitting. Like everything else I loved in my life.”

“Dean…” The pitying look is back, so Dean looks away. “Forgive me if I’m not relieved it’s just the car! You could have been _in it_ when that bomb went off!”

“Oh, no,” a voice from the doorway startles them both. Sam hunches forward protectively over Dean’s torso. “That would never have happened. The goal was to send a message to us. If Dean’s life was really going to be threatened, the bomb wouldn’t have been detonated on a Sunday, at a time when he’s usually safe and sound in the house, bugging Cas to make him pancakes shaped like mickey mouse ears.”

The strange, bald man in the suit steps into the room and shuts the door behind him as he shoots Dean a smile that’s a mile wide.

“Don’t deny it. Cas told us.”

“Who the hell are you?” Sam bites.

“Relax, relax, I’m a… recipient of said message if you will. Zachariah Novak. AKA Cas’ big brother. Well, one of them.”

“Did the Masters’ do it?” Dean asks, wincing at the pain in his ribs as he shifts in the bed.

“No, these are bigger fish. You don’t need to worry. Cas is on the warpath, he and some of our brothers are hunting the ones responsible right now. Do you know, his skin went an entirely new shade of white that I didn’t even know _existed_ when we got the news about you! Luckily, most of your injuries are from bouncing around on your butt on your own stairs, not the actual blast.”

The man sidled further into the room, and Dean notices the teddy-bear in his hands.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Oh, this is Gabriel’s way of saying he hopes you feel better soon. You’re not allowed to be snarky about it; he and Uriel saved your life.”

“They’re my tail?”

“One of the rotations of it, yeah. We take turns to trail your boring little life. It’s all very democratic, but it's the only thing that keeps Cas under control.”

Dean grunts a little, as Zachariah places the little bear beside the bed, then ruffles his hair. Sam still looks unhappy, and his bitch-face is turned up to maximum.

“How do we know those _fish_ won’t try it again? Do they still think Castiel is living there?”

“Cas is on it, relax. He's really very proficient once he has a target in his sights. It will all be handled, so don’t worry your pretty little heads!” Zachariah waves as he headed to the door. “Dean is the safest man in the city! The only one with more of our eyes on them is your two girls, Samuel!”

Sam leaps to his feet at the mention of Jess and their baby, but Zachariah is already out the door with a backwards wave and an obnoxious ‘Ciao!’ hollered over his shoulder.

Dean scowled after him and then settles back on his pillow and starts cataloguing the hurt. His head throbbed and his ribs throbbed and his back throbbed…

“Winchester Junior Junior is a girl, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam slowly sat back down. “Mary.”

“Mary,” Dean murmurs to himself. “Mary. After mom.”

“Yeah,” Sam’s still eyeing the door. Dean’s asleep by the time he finally turns away from it.

*

A week later, Dean’s home and sulking on the couch in his living room, beer in hand as he scowls at the TV and tries not to think about the scorch marks on his driveway.

Then, with very little announcement, he hears the front door open.

It can only be one man.

The door pin reset itself daily, communicated by password protected text messages sent to both Dean and Cas’ phones. So, Cas walking right in is not so much of a surprise; what stuns Dean is that he would want to.

There’s a strange tone to Cas’ voice when he calls out, “Baby, you home? I'm back!” and Dean can hear another voice with him, the two speaking in low, urgent tones.

Something’s not right.

Taking the bait, he calls back, “Hey, angel!” and ignores his heart when it just about stutters up into his throat at saying those words. He listens to the rustling sound of Cas taking off his trench coat, then his footsteps moving down the hall to the open-plan kitchen and living area. The house still looks a mess, so the expression on Cas’ face when he steps into the room isn’t that of a man impressed.

Dean returns it verbatim and takes a long pull of his beer to prepare himself for whatever the fuck is about to happen next.

Cas strides straight over to Dean, and the man who’s followed him into the room must be a foe, not a friend, because Dean can tell he’s got a cocked gun hidden inside his coat.

“Hey, baby,” Cas leans down and kisses Dean, once, twice. “I know I’m back from New York earlier than expected, but you could have cleaned up a little.”

“What can I say, I like it dirty,” Dean gathers himself and sits up, shoots a nod to the guy still in the doorway. “Who’s Happy?”

“An old friend,” is the clear lie in response, before Cas smiles tightly at Dean and turns back towards the kitchen.

The guy is darting looks about the room, at the pictures of Dean and Cas still in every photo frame because Dean can’t get rid of them; at the literature stuffed into every bookshelf – Nabokov, Tolstoy, Fadeyev – that Dean will never crack open but can’t throw away; at Cas’ plants, the ficus tree with practically no leaves left, the drooping ferns, miserable in their pots because Dean can’t let them die but doesn’t know how to care for them either.

Cas is still very present in the house; it’s still his home, still half-full of his possessions, all because Dean can’t let go of the hope that this is all a bad dream and none of it is real and Cas really is an English teacher and he really is a mechanic and they still have a shot at waking up one day and making it work and being happy.

Dean and the strange man eye each other with barely concealed suspicion, before the stranger turns and says something to Cas in a language Dean doesn’t know.

Cas turns from his show of pretending to be preparing dinner, which he seems to be doing a good job of considering Dean knows there’s shit all in the fridge except for a few eggs, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and half a lemon. And Dean’s precious, precious beer.

Cas and the man have a rapid, angry exchange, before the guy turns and storms down the hall, through the sitting room and out of the house, slamming the door in his wake.

“I'm sorry. Thank you,” the relief is palpable in Cas’ voice as he addresses Dean, and in the way he sags against the counter. “I’m sorry to intrude like this, but… Bartholomew was going to kill me.”

“Who was he?” Dean stands to peer out the window, but the driveway and pavement beyond are empty.

“An enemy. A dangerous one.”

“You couldn’t have taken him?”

“My cover’s barely holding by a thread, but it’s safer to let him report to his superiors that I’m who I’m still trying to pretend to be.”

“He’s not one of the assholes who blew up my car, is he?”

“No. That was another family altogether, who we’ve silenced. They can never hurt you again.”

“Jesus, angel, how many enemies do you have?” The pet name slips out automatically before Dean can help it, and Cas looks away.

“Too many, and they’ve all decided to come crawling out of the woodwork at once,” he mutters, and God, yeah, he looks wrecked, with black rings around his tired eyes, his skin an unhealthy grey.

“Have you been sleeping?” Dean asks, despite himself, his aching heart not able to cope with the thought of the love of his life suffering.

“Not properly. Not since… not without you. It doesn’t feel right, I can never relax enough. I've been worrying about you...”

Dean can’t look at him anymore, can’t let his pain be magnified.

“Well, uh, feel free to go upstairs and grab a shower, I’ll bring you some food and you can get some sleep.”

“What?”

“We made a deal with your people, and your brothers saved my ass after my freaking car exploded, so I assume I’m not in any more danger than usual if you stay a while.”

Cas, to Dean’s complete shock and after cocking his head at him in surprise, goes and does exactly as he suggests. Dean listens to his footsteps dragging up the stairs, a sound he’s heard a billion times, and very carefully does not allow himself to cry.

Dean can’t cook to save his life, but he manages a piece of toast and fried eggs that don’t look too atrocious. When he brings it up to Cas, he finds him rumpled and warm from the shower, wearing one of Dean’s old sweaters, dozing against the pillows in their bed.

Dean, because he’s weak, climbs onto the bed next to Cas as he wolfs down the food without complaint. Five minutes later he’s asleep against Dean’s chest, the plate abadoned on the nightstand.

It feels so natural, so normal. Dean lets himself stroke a hand down Cas’ jaw, thumb sweeping down his neck, before he rests his temple against his hair and watches the shadows lengthen and turn to night on the opposite wall.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean stirred awake when the warm body that had been pressed against his shifted away, and Cas began to climb from the bed.

“No, angel,” Dean mumbled, his head still foggy with sleep, but conscious enough to manage reaching out to wind an arm around Cas again.

“Dean,” Cas sighed in that freaking _way_ , so Dean cracked an eye open to scowl up at him. Cas’ body was glowing almost silver in the moonlight, his hair an inky blue. He was staring down at Dean with an insurmountable sadness in his eyes.

“Don’t go, baby. Please.”

“I shouldn’t have stayed this long… I shouldn’t have come at all. I led Crowley’s goon right through our front door! I should have gone straight to my brothers. Michael will be furious.”

“Fuck Michael. You needed sleep. You still need sleep. Come back to bed.”

Cas frowned, and for a moment Dean was sure he would refuse, so he let his hand trail up over the cooling skin of Cas' hip. Cas slid a hand through Dean’s hair in response, then tipped his chin back to gaze down into his face.

“Stay, angel. Till morning at least. Let’s go back to sleep, come on,” Dean begged him.

“No,” Cas murmured, and Dean’s heart sank. But before he could let him go, Cas had peeled off his sweater and was moving back onto the bed to clamber on top of him.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Cas whispered, and Dean groaned in delight at feeling his weight settle on his hips. Then he rolled them over, pinning Cas under him in a tangle of sheets.

“God, baby, I’ve missed you so much,” he muttered into Cas’ hair as he interlaced their fingers together.

By way of answering, Cas surged up and kissed him, using his momentum to wrap his legs around Dean’s waist and pull him down hard on top of him.

Dean gasped into it, then gasped again when Cas slid his tongue into his mouth. He let his hips rock down gently and Cas’ legs tightened before he ran his hands down Dean’s back, only stopping when he reached his ass, which he squeezed.

“Shit, angel!” Dean turned his mouth to Cas’ neck, sucked at the spot below his jaw that always made him writhe. Cas didn’t disappoint, letting out a soft cry when Dean pressed his tongue to the sensitive skin, his body beginning to squirm.

“Dean! Baby! Please!”

“Please what, angel?” Dean mumbled as he finally pulled away and sat back on his heels, unpeeling Cas’ legs from his waist so he could hold them open by the ankles and let his hungry gaze rove his body.

Cas’ chest was heaving, and his cock was starting to stiffen under Dean’s gaze. When he didn’t respond to the question, Dean ran a hand over the thickening length to make him pant, loving the way it hardened under his touch.

“You want me to beg?” Cas gritted out, when Dean let his thumb swipe under the head a moment before he took his hand away completely.

“I want you to tell me what you want.”

“Want you. Always want you. Want this, and I never want it to stop. I need you, Dean!” Cas sat up and kissed him again, and Dean’s heart physically ached.

 _You had me. You still have me_ he wanted to say. He doesn’t. Instead he shoved Cas back down and licked a line from his hole, over his balls and all the way up to the tip of his cock. He made that path again and again while Cas rubbed at his neck and shoulders, his sweet whimpers filling the room. 

Dean had missed it so badly, the taste and weight of Cas’ cock in his mouth, and it was a while before he could abandon it in favour of prepping him properly. By God he’d missed that part too; had missed hearing Cas’ cute little cries as Dean rimmed him until he was trembling; had missed feeling how warm and sensitive he was inside.

Once Cas was yanking at Dean’s shoulders, trying to pull his tongue deeper, Dean finally sat up and grabbed the lube from the bedside drawer so he could start using his fingers instead. This might just be Dean’s favourite bit – getting to watch the pleasure on Cas’ face, the way his eyes darkened, his body shook, and his cheeks flushed. Dean took his time, crooking and pumping his fingers, trying to commit every sensation, every one of Cas’ noises, and the sight of him, God, the sight of him, completely to memory.

He worked his angel until Cas was delirious with need, whimpering high and reedy as his body rocked against Dean’s fingers. Then Dean rubbed himself against his hole, slicking it even more with his own precum.

“Yeah, baby, right there, just like that,” Cas whimpered at him, his hair beginning to tousle with sweat.

“Right here, huh?” Dean mumbled back, letting himself slide in, little bit by little bit. “Right here like this?”

“Yeah, fuck, yeah, yeah! It’s so -” Cas just had time to whine before his breath caught and whatever else he was going to say was lost in a moan. His legs found Dean’s waist again, and his hands clutched at his shoulders; Dean settled into a steady, thorough rhythm once Cas had adjusted to him.

Dean thought he was moving fast, that he was thrusting as deep as he could, but it apparently wasn’t enough. Cas pressed their bodies together with all his strength and grumbled in his ear, “Come _on_ baby, stop playing around and just fucking give it to me! I need it, need it as hard and fast and rough as you can. I _need_ you.”

Cas punctuated his last words with a few clenches of his hole around the base of Dean’s cock. Dean almost came.

“Fuck…” he pulled out slowly, as far as Cas’ legs would let him, then slammed back in, thrusts which he repeated over and over until Cas was open-mouthed and gasping for breath as he writhed against the pillows. He looked beyond beautiful in the moonlight.

“That’s how you want it, huh? Like that? Want to feel me all day tomorrow, angel?” Dean grunted, feeling Cas’ hands start to slip in the sweat sliding down his own back.

“Wanna feel you always, want it as rough as you can. Never want to forget,” Cas mumbled as he started to reach for himself. As much as Dean loved watching that, there was no way Cas was going to get away with it this time.

“Nuh-uh, that’s mine,” he slapped Cas’ hand away and wrapped his own fingers around Cas’ leaking cock, settling back on his knees with Cas’ hips tilted up onto his lap so he could keep fucking him even as he stroked.

Cas’ cock was scorching hot and dribbling precum; Dean only needed a little extra lube to help him make it completely slick. His strokes had little finesse; it was hard to keep a rhythm with his hand when his own thrusts were taking so much of his attention, but Cas didn’t seem to care.

He came quicker than Dean expected him too, with just a whimper of “Baby! Oh fuck!” before Dean’s fist was coated in wet warmth. Dean leaned down so he could kiss Cas through it, thrusting his tongue into his mouth in time with his cock in his ass. Cas wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck to hold him there even once he was spent.

With Cas taken care of, Dean focused his attention on sinking all his weight into each thrust. Cas felt like heaven, so warm around him, and he bit at Dean’s ear as he started to lose his rhythm.

“So perfect in me, baby, so big and thick. Oh God, you fuck me so good, baby! Give it to me, come on, faster, baby, go fast…”

Dean groaned as he came with his face buried in Cas’ neck, panting against his sweaty skin. Cas whined again in pleasure as Dean filled him, but still wouldn’t loosen his legs. Dean flopped down on his chest, so spent he was practically cross-eyed, and tried to catch his breath.

He eventually wriggled free and slid out, used the sheet to clean them up a little. Cas stretched with a little moan, then curled up into a sleepy, sated ball. Dean laid down behind him and pressed himself to his back, wrapped his arms around Cas’ waist and sighed in contentment against his shoulder.

“Please don’t let go?” Cas’ whisper lingered in the warm, thick air around him, and Dean kissed the back of his neck as he dragged the sheets up around them. “Don’t let me go… Don’t let go, please…”

“I won’t. I won’t, baby,” Dean murmured, and Cas twisted a little in his arms to let their mouths meet again.

When Dean next woke, it was properly morning, and sunlight was filtering into the room. Cas was gone from the bed, but Dean could hear the shower running. The palpable mood of finality was hanging in the air.

Dean had managed to ignore it last night, when they were both too consumed by their need that nothing else had mattered, but he couldn’t ignore it now. When he slid into the bathroom, Cas wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“For fuck’s sake,” Dean grumbled, using the toilet before he splashed cold water on his face at the sink, not caring that it changed the shower temperature on Cas.

“Just say it,” he snapped, when Cas finally looked at him through the glass of the shower wall, sin personified, all glorious naked skin and wet hair, water streaming down the cut of his hips...

Cas didn’t answer until he’d shut the water off and was towelling his hair dry. Dean brushed past him and started the shower again, shivering as he waited for the water to get up to temperature again.

“What’s the point in saying anything?” Dean just barely heard Cas mutter over the noise of the spray.

“I’m not your fucking booty call!” Dean snapped at Cas as finished drying himself then wrapped Deans’ towel around his waist, which he’d pinched, as usual. Dean wondered if he hadn’t noticed that his old favourite towel was still hanging off the rail under the window (Dean couldn’t bear to pack it away in the linen cupboard), or if he was just acting on habit by taking Dean’s.

“You can’t just show up, beg me to help you, beg me to fuck you, beg me to hold you, then swan off like it’s nothing, like it was a mistake!” Dean yelled at him.

Cas froze in the doorway but didn’t turn.

“It wasn’t nothing. And it wasn’t a mistake.”

“SO WHAT THEN?! What am I to you now? What are we? Who the fuck _are_ you?” Dean smacked a fist against the wall in frustration.

“You are and will always be the love of my life. I don’t regret a single second of last night. But you must already know it can’t possibly happen again, Dean. That was goodbye. I love you. I love you too much to keep you dangling in hope that we can sort things out. We can’t. The reality of who we are when we step out the front door will never go away. And if we can never escape it, if there will always be people coming for us, hunting us, how can we really have a future together?”

Dean turned away, fuming, not wanting to look at his stupid, perfect face any longer.

He half expected Cas to have left the house altogether, by the time he had dried off and dressed. Instead, he found Cas in the study wearing yesterday’s clothes, standing at the safe, which was open on the bookshelf.

He froze when Cas handed him the two things that had been inside, and all the rest of the shouting he wanted to do died in his throat.

One item was a file, a manilla folder stuffed full of papers. The other was a ring box.

“I have to go, I’m late. Don’t open either of those till I’m gone, please,” was all Cas said before he was disappearing out the study door. Dean started to scramble after him, before he did a 180 in the hallway and ducked back to their bedroom. He wrenched open his dresser drawer and rifled through it with shaking hands until he found the box that he’d hidden away all those months ago.

Cas was at the bottom of the stairs, pulling on his trench coat when Dean caught him and shoved the balled-up hiking socks into his hands.

Cas stared down at them in confusion, raising one eyebrow, but he must have felt the box inside because he eventually freed it from the heel of one of the socks.

“Ah.”

“Yeah. You might as well have it anyway.”

Cas looked up at him with those fucking eyes, with so much regret and sadness and joy all at once, and Dean had to kiss him. Cas sighed into it, chased for more when Dean started to pull back, the folder in Dean’s hands crushed between them. Dean grew dizzy with endorphins as their lips brushed and their tongues slid together and he used his thighs to back Cas against the wall.

They only parted when they were out of breath. Cas pressed his forehead to Dean’s, his chest heaving. It took Dean a few moments to realise Cas was crying.

“You do understand, don’t you, that everything I did, every day, was just so that I could be with you? You were my lifeline. It was all I wanted; you were all I had. Everything else was just an obstacle to get through, a fight to win, a test or a trial, until I could be home with you. And now I feel like I’m cut loose, severed from my _only_ reason…” Cas’ voice trailed off from its harsh whisper down to nothing.

Dean scrunched his eyes up to try and keep them dry.

“I was gonna propose on our anniversary,” he told him, and Cas whimpered a little through his tears.

“I was going to do it on your birthday.”

“God, baby, why can’t this work? Why do we have to go through this? Why don’t we just try?” Dean groaned, still not understanding. He’d never understand.

“You’ve already been identified, targeted and almost killed by people trying to get to me. And it worked! It _got_ me. Our covers won’t hold; covers never do. It’s amazing that they have lasted this long. And once they break, I don’t know if I can protect you.”

“I can protect myself! I look at you and I still feel everything. Nothing has changed.”

But Cas was pulling away, tapping the folder. “ _Everything_ has changed, Dean. Or at least it will when you read that. Don’t open it until I’m gone.”

“Cas. Cas, I still love you. I can’t just _stop_.”

“I know you do. But you won’t for much longer. Wait for me to leave,” Cas, when he looked back from the doorway, only had eyes for the folder.

“Cas! Baby, don’t do this! Stay with me. Please?”

He doesn’t get an answer beyond the click of the door as it was pulled shut.

The manilla folder contained a dossier. And when Dean flipped it open, sitting down where Cas had left him at the bottom of the stairs, a part of him isn’t actually surprised to find the dossier is on him.

It’s all of his details, his real details; everything Cas could have ever wanted to know about Dean Winchester’s life, from his family, to his high school grades, to his social security number, to his cover identity working at Singer Auto Repair, all spelled out in Times New Roman size 12 font.

Cas had known Dean’s real name all along; he knew all about Sammy’s family too – Jessica and baby Mary; he knew about his career history even before the FBI; he knew about every single mission Dean had taken since he’d first become an agent. The file was updated frequently by both handwritten notes and newly typed pages.

There was even an up-to-date list, in Cas’ own handwriting, of everyone Dean had ever killed in the line of duty. Meg Masters’ was the most recent name – _killed in FBI raid, 04/04/2020, headshot_.

Dean, it transpired, had been on the Novak’s watch list as a suspected secret agent for the FBI. Cas’ instructions had been to infiltrate Dean’s life, earn his trust, observe his activities, and eliminate him if Dean was discovered to be in possession of any intel on the Novak family. How Cas had been allowed to turn that ‘observation’ into a three-year-long relationship was beyond Dean.

The date at the top of the page of instructions was the 5th of September 2017; Dean had met Cas for the first time in the Roadhouse the following day.

Cas had lied to Sammy in the interrogation room. He'd known all along that Dean was FBI, because he'd been sent to kill him.

Cas had lied in so many circles, so many different directions, so many different ways, that he probably didn’t know what the truth was anymore; he was probably so used to it he could do it in his sleep.

Dean slowly flipped the folder shut and lowered it down on the floor, then opened the box he’d tucked into his pocket.

The ring was rose gold surrounded by black titanium. When Dean slid it onto his finger it was the perfect fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... bet you're all pissed.
> 
> Putting my notes at the end for once cos there's spoilers at the bottom.
> 
> Thanks times a billion tomy phenomenal betas, who've been so so so amazing, I love you guys so much.
> 
> Come @ me on tumblr, I'm jean----ralphio
> 
> Follow these two links once you've read the chapter if you want to see the two engagement rings:
> 
> Deans's: https://www.michaelhill.co.nz/ring-in-black-titanium-10ct-rose-gold-15413345.html?cgid=jewellery-mens-rings  
> Cas': https://www.michaelhill.co.nz/ring-in-black-titanium-10ct-rose-gold-15413192.html?cgid=jewellery-mens-rings


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys.  
> I suck, I know.  
> I'm so sorry this chapter has taken so long. A lot has been going on this year, but I never expected to let it go this long without an update!  
> I was literally working on this chapter when I broke the USB it was saved to, a few months back, lost it and a lot of other writing and haven't been able to go back to it mentally since.   
> But the good news is it's here now, and chapter 6 - the final chapter - is en route!  
> Thanks for all your support and thanks as ever to my amazing betas who've worked so hard to help me with this fic!   
> <3

It took Dean a long time to haul himself up from where Cas had left him, sitting at the bottom of the stairs with the ring on his finger and the folder in his white-knuckled hands.

He had missed-calls galore from his brother, and eventually remembered he was supposed to be at work. Three hours late was better than not at all, right?

Dean felt like he was stumbling and floating at the same time, breathless and weightless, as he pulled on his leather jacket, locked his front door, and staggered across the porch. He had made it half-way down the front steps before he stopped dead once more.

A black 67’ Impala was sitting in the driveway. It was a different one, obviously, but the nostalgia and hurt hit so hard that Dean had to grab hard for the rail as his knees weakened. He stared at the car for some time, struggling to equate what he could see with what he knew. It felt like he was being taunted, tormented, because things kept happening both without Cas and because of him.

Cas insisted he had to stay away, which broke Dean’s heart; then he’d return, and break it again; inevitable, it seemed, he’d disappear, flee, give up, and break Dean all over again as he left.

There was a car in the driveway, and it wasn’t Dean’s, wasn’t Baby. It was a peace offering from the Novak’s, Dean assumed – a consolation prize, as if to say no, you can’t have the man you love but hey, we’ll give you a car, so it’s all square, right? Of course, the only reason he’d lost his Baby was because of Cas’ fucking family in the first place.

Yet another kick to gut, curtesy of the Novak’s; Dean owned a house devoid of the man he loved, a car that would never be _his_ car, and a folder full of lies and truths, pain and questions.

Oh, and he had an engagement ring on his finger. Cas hadn’t _given_ given it to him, but he’d given it to him.

Dean stared down at the band, then up at the car again. He looked back at the house, too. His house. Their house. Their house, where he and Cas had fucked last night and argued this morning. The manila folder that contained eight pieces of paper in Dean’s hand was both the only evidence that Cas had come back, however briefly, and the source of everything that had gone wrong thus far.

But now Cas was gone, with just a car and a ring and a folder left behind. Only Cas wasn’t gone, not really, because Dean couldn’t let him go. And he wasn’t staying gone either, because he kept fucking coming back, even if only to keep telling Dean it was over.

It wasn’t fucking over.

Dean was trailed on his drive to work by a bright orange Beetle that he was pretty sure belonged to Gabriel. He paid the vehicle no attention, just swung into his usual parking spot, and sat there for a while to get his bearings. For some reason, getting out of the car and walking through the front door felt like one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.

No one commented on the ring, but he clocked them noticing it.

Charlie raced up to him for a hug, worried and babbling, when she spotted him heading to the office he shared with his brother. Then she’d suddenly squeaked and clapped her hands over her mouth, which meant she’d spotted the rose gold and titanium band glinting away on his finger.

Jody’s lips pressed into a thin line as she observed him from his doorway, when he dumped his jacket on his desk. Her eyes narrowed in on his hand. She didn’t speak.

Dean’s squad all exchanged worried looks when he walked past them, and Chuck opened his mouth as if to say something before Jo nudged him hard in the ribs.

Dean didn’t say anything to anyone, just strode into Henriksen’s office, flopped down in a chair in front of his desk and handed the dossier over.

Henriksen read it through, looked up at Dean in horror, then read it again.

“What the… oh, hell, Winchester… oh, fuck… that… that _prick_.”

At some point, Henriksen laid the folder carefully back down on his desk, got to his feet and paced around the room for a few minutes, agitated and angry. Then he crossed back over to Dean and wordlessly laid a firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing the muscle and bone through his shirt in some attempt to offer comfort.

Dean didn’t react.

Henriksen let him go with an awkward pat, then promptly snatched up a pot plant from his desk and threw it at the wall with a howl of “FUCK! THOSE FUCKING, LYING PIECES OF SHIT! BASTARD ASSHOLES!”

Jody rushed in, surveyed the scene, and read the open dossier on Henriksen’s desk when Dean gestured her towards it. Then she sat down next to him and put her arms around his shoulders, pulling his head into her neck so he could weep with some quiet dignity.

Henriksen continued to pace, swear, and randomly vent his anger on his furniture.

Charlie peeked around the door not long after, ducked aside as Henriksen kicked a filing cabinet in the corner, and hunkered down on Dean’s other side to hold his hand. She eyed the folder with wide and worried eyes, and either read it upside down or didn’t read it at all.

Henriksen had pretty much trashed the entirety of his own office by the time Sam ran in, yelling for him to stop.

All three of the others left the room then, by silent agreement, Jody towing Henriksen by the wrist, Charlie pushing on his shoulder blades, as their boss continued to swear and stamp and rage.

“FUCKING NOVAKS! FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING NOVAKS! THOSE FUCKING LYING PIECES OF – “

“VICTOR!” Jody slapped him, which calmed him down, slightly, even though it made Charlie gasp.

Sam watched them go, looking concerned, and like with Jody, Dean just waved a hand at the waiting folder.

Sam picked up the dossier. Sam read the dossier. Sam put down the dossier. Sam grabbed Dean’s arms and hauled him to his feet, yanked him into a hug before Dean could tell him no, don’t bother, don’t try to fix this, Sammy, because it can’t be fixed.

Sam didn’t let him go for a long time.

Sam didn’t let go, not when Dean silently settled his arms around his waist to signify his eventual acceptance of the hug, not when Dean pressed his face into his brother’s collarbone to hide his wet eyes; not when the sobs that wracked Dean’s body finally subsided until all he could do was simply whimper against the fabric of Sam’s shirt as he clutched at him with the last vestiges of his strength.

Sam didn’t let him go for a long time.

*

Time passed.

Days seemed to begin and end in the blink of an eye, whereas individual hours seemed stretched out endlessly until somehow entire weeks had gone by without Dean realising. He could never seem to distinguish one minute from the next, let alone figure out what month it was.

Sometimes he went to work. Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he went to bed at 6 p.m. and woke up an hour later feeling refreshed. Sometimes he woke 24 hours later, still exhausted.

Sam came by a lot, more than was safe for his cover if they were being watched, but none of them had the energy to really care about that anymore. Sam brought food with him, homecooked meals from Jessica, or else an uber eats driver would knock and knock until Dean answered the door; either way Sammy made sure he ate.

Eating and sleeping were pretty much all Dean was capable of, and some days even that was a big ask. He was on tenterhooks, feeling like he was tiptoeing on a highwire and that one wrong move would have him plummeting to earth, the illusion that he was coping shattered.

As it was, Dean didn’t get over the hurt of the folder and Cas’ lies so much as he accepted it, woke up one night at 2 a.m. and simply pushed it all aside, into a dusty, unused corner of his brain where it wouldn’t hurt if he didn’t let it.

But Dean still wanted answers. The dossier made it clear that Dean was supposed to have been observed, then either eliminated or moved on from. Cas hadn’t done either; why? And why had he been allowed to get away with it?

There was only one thing Dean was sure of, one thing that he could hold on to with certainty; he still loved Cas and he didn’t have the energy to be able to pretend that he could stop.

*

A few more months limped by before Dean managed to resume some semblance of a normal life. He made it to Friday afternoon one week in August without even realising it, having worked his rostered hours every day, eaten proper meals and gotten a good amount of exercise and sleep the whole week.

He felt good. Actually _good_.

Sam didn’t even bitch-face too hard when Jody silently poured Dean a congratulatory shot of whiskey at 5 p.m. and Dean offered her a smile as he tossed it back.

He cooked a meal all by himself that night of steak, eggs, and chips, adding a single broccoli floret on top. He was pretty sure Sam had some sort of spidey-sense directly linked to whether Dean was consuming vegetables, and he’d been nagged enough by his brother the past few months about his eating habits.

Dean was just flipping through TV channels on the couch with another glass of whiskey, far more than just a shot’s worth, when Cas phoned.

“Dean,” Cas rasped down the phone, and Dean was sitting up immediately, frozen.

“Cas? Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you OK?” Dean demanded again.

“I’m fine. I just… needed to hear your voice. It’s been so long, I… I miss you so much.”

“God damn it, baby,” Dean groaned, rubbing at his eyes, and not knowing what to say. “Radio silence, an engagement ring, finding out you’re a barefaced liar and I was on your fucking hitlist… now this?”

“I know. I just. I need… You.”

“A part of me hates you,” Dean muttered back, fuming, but still loving him all the same ways he always had.

“I deserve far worse than hatred. I hope you despise me for the rest of your life.”

“I just might. What do you want, Cas? Why are you doing this? Why have you called me?”

“I needed to hear your voice. Hear that you’re doing OK.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m not fucking OK, angel, Jesus Christ, how could I be?!” Dean told him blandly and Cas gasped a little down the phone as if that caused him pain.

“I _was_ ,” Dean continued. “I was getting by. I was coping, kind of. Now I’m talking to you and I feel like pure shit all over again and all my progress has been blown sky-high. You just… you fuck me up so much!”

“I’m sorry. I just missed you. Letting you go has not been easy.”

“So come back! Come home!” Dean doesn’t get why that seemed so impossible to Cas.

The only response was a sigh down the line before Cas hung up.

Not five minutes passed before Cas was calling back, though Dean had finished two more glasses of whiskey by then.

“You really think I want to talk to you? Why do you keep doing this to me?!” Dean spat when he picked up, because of course he fucking picked up.

“Is Sam with you?” Cas’ voice was weird, strained, like his throat was too tight to get the words out properly, so he was pushing them out half-formed.

“…What?”

“Is Sam with you, Dean?”

“Nah, he’s at the gym, why?”

“Because my brothers who were watching his house have both been killed.”

“WHAT?!”

“Dean. Jessica and the baby have been taken.”

*

Dean jumped the curb twice, ran Baby 2.0 through someone’s bins and broke the speed limit the whole way to Sam’s place. When he arrived at the house there were police cars everywhere and Jody was waving her arms as she directed the uniforms to start door-knocking and questioning witnesses.

Dean flung himself out of the car and pelted straight to his brother, who was being restrained by Henriksen and about three officers. Sammy was fighting them with all he had, howling wordlessly at Gabriel Novak, who was white-faced as he knelt between two covered bodies lying the pavement.

Dean barrelled them all aside to get to Sammy, who screamed for him as soon as he spotted him, his tone nothing but hysteria and grief. Henriksen practically threw Sam at him and Dean dropped to his knees cradling his brother and held him as tightly as he could, clamping his arms around his thrashing body. The scream that shook through Sam didn’t subside for a second, and Dean clutched at his scalp, rubbed at his stupid long hair, mumbled anything he could think of to try and help, to try and ease the pain.

Dean didn’t know what had happened, why Jess and baby Mary had been targeted. He didn’t need to know.

“I’m going to get them back, if it’s the last thing I do, I swear it, Sammy.”

Sam writhed about anyway, fingers scrabbling at Dean’s shoulder as he wailed in anguish. He didn’t calm down until an ambulance officer stuck him in the neck with a sedative. It was then and only then that Dean relaxed his grip and lowered his brother gently to slump on the ground, his head resting on Dean’s lap.

Gabriel, who hadn’t spoken a word, hadn’t moved an inch, and hadn’t answered his constantly trilling cell-phone, met Dean’s eyes then. The shrouded bodies of his brothers lay between them.

“I’m sorry,” Dean told him, rubbing at Sam’s shoulders, petting his cheek. His brother was in pain. But Gabriel’s were dead, and the man couldn’t touch them, would never hold them again.

Gabriel didn’t reply, just wiped at his wet face. He was still kneeling there when Henriksen helped Dean get Sam into the back of the ambulance, which was peeling away before they’d even properly got the doors shut.

*

Sam cried in frustration, in panic, in grief, handcuffed to a hospital bed while their team simultaneously scrambled to figure out what to do and sat around stunned and waiting.

Charlie surprised them all by getting over the shock and fury the quickest; she was screaming down the phone at Michael Novak when she came to pick them up from the hospital in Baby 2.0, which Dean had left in the street outside Sam’s place with the keys in the ignition and the engine running.

“You get this dealt with and you get Jessica and the baby back THIS INSTANT, NOVAK!” She roared, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching her phone to her ear, as she floored the accelerator all the way back to the office. No one dared to try and stop her.

Jody was the angriest, shaking with rage as she snapped at everyone who crossed her path, as she broke five pencils in half one after the other, as she crumpled papers on her desk between trembling fingers.

Sam’s team were the most upset, and his second-in-command, Amelia, cried even as she paced about, too agitated to sit down. The others were all white-faced and shaking from their sobs, slumped in their seats.

Dean helped Sam into a chair in the open plan area

, and his brother promptly buried his face in his hands and started crying again.

“I know, I know,” Dean lingered helplessly at his side, rubbed at the tension in Sam’s back and shoulders, not knowing how to even start to try and help. “I know, Sammy. I’m going to get them back…”

The rest of his desperate pleas to calm his brother were cut short by a troop of men striding through the doors, led by Charlie. Henriksen moved to meet them with a hand extended. It took Dean a moment to realise Cas was amongst them, his heart skipping a few beats as he drank in the sight of him, pale and scruffy-haired, red-eyed. It took his brain a little bit to click into gear and realise that this must be the Novak family.

A surprisingly young man with blonde hair and green eyes stood a little in front of them all; he was easily the youngest of the whole group, younger even than Cas. Michael Novak surveyed them all with an air of hostility, and Jody came to her feet to put herself in front of Dean and Sam, her hand on her gun.

Dean noticed over Jody’s shoulder that Gabriel wasn’t amongst his brothers. Neither was the strange one who had visited Dean at the hospital, Zachariah.

“Victor Henriksen,” Dean’s boss shook Michael Novak’s hand. “I’m sorry for what happened to your family.”

“Uriel and Zachariah knew their duty,” was the only answer Henriksen got, before Michael’s eyes slid past him to Sam. Dean tightened his arms around his brother’s torso from where he stood next to him, but Sam was quiet, still.

“If it is any comfort to you, your wife and daughter will not be harmed, Samuel.”

“I just want them back! I just need my baby back… and Jessica, God… if anything happens…” Sam started to shake all over, and reached up to clutch at Dean, who rubbed at his back with both hands.

“I got you, I got you, shhh…” Dean murmured to him.

“Dean!” Sam choked out, before he began to cry again into Dean’s chest.

“I know. I know, Sammy. I’m going to get them; I swear to God.” Dean shot a glance at Henriksen, whose mouth was turned down. Promises like what Dean was making were the first they were taught not to do. Dean didn’t care.

Michael was frowning too, his gaze fixed on Sam’s back. On Dean’s hand on Sam’s back. On the ring. Dean curled his fingers tighter into his brother’s jacket and pressed his mouth down into his hair.

“But who has taken them, and why?” Charlie demanded, her hands on her hips.

“Gabriel identified cars that we know belong to Crowley’s people fleeing the scene,” a handsome dark-skinned Novak spoke up from the back of the group.

“Crowley?” Sam croaked. “Who… who is Crowley? Why…?”

“Crowley is a headache of mine that I never expected to stoop so low,” Michael told him. “The good news is that he has made contact. Jessica and the baby are completely unharmed.”

Dean’s eyes flicked back to Cas in relief, “You’ve heard from him? You swear they’re fine?”

“Crowley, for all his despicable sins, won’t harm them. I guarantee it,” Michael cut in.

“Like I give a fuck about anything _you_ say,” Dean spat at him. “You ordered my fucking death, you piece of – “

“Winchester!” Henriksen barked at him, but Michael’s eyes were already cold. In Dean’s arms, Sam was confused.

“But I have no idea who Crowley is! Why the hell has he taken my family! I’ve never even met him!”

Michael’s eyes flicked to Dean, and down to the engagement ring once more.

“Oh fuck,” Dean whispered. “Oh no, oh God no.”

Sam stared up at him, perplexed by his reaction, and as Dean looked down into his eyes, he felt his heart snap.

“It’s my fault,” he croaked to his little brother, chest constricting, throat too tight. Then he rounded on Castiel, “It’s my fault! This is because of us, isn’t it!”

Cas started to come to him, but Michael held up a hand and stopped his brother without looking at it.

“Samuel, your wife and child will be retrieved safely and returned to you as quickly as we can, you have my word on that.”

“My people will help,” Henriksen said and instantly Sam’s team we’re clamouring forward to offer their support, Jody a step behind.

Dean ignored the upheaval in favour of pressing his forehead down against his brother’s.

“Dean?” Sam was still so desperate for answers.

“I think it’s cos of me, Sammy,” Dean whispered back in defeat. “They took them and because they identified you through me. It’s my fault.”

Sam dissolved in tears again, and Dean wrapped his arms around him once more, beyond grateful that his brother wasn’t lashing out at him, at least not yet.

“I’m gonna get her, Sammy. I will get her, and Jess, I swear to you. I swear to you.”

Cas met his eyes again, as Dean stroked at his brother’s hair. Then Cas’ eyes flicked down to the ring on Dean’s left hand and he offered him a weak smile, removing his own hand from his pocket to display the ring Dean had gotten him on his own finger, the alternating bands of titanium and rose gold.

Dean didn’t know what to say, what to do, what to feel, so he just pressed his face down against his brother’s hair and closed his eyes, to better will the whole world away.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, we did it! The end is nigh!
> 
> Thank you so much to my amazing betas from tumblr; @studio-hatter, you have been so lovely and supportive and I couldn't have done it without you, I <3 you; @gracelesstars, your endless patience and epic help have been so amazing and your comments elevated this fic so much, and I <3 you; @whosthathufflepuff, my parabatai, my better half, my bff (Felicia Day said it, so its canon), you already know I <3 you.
> 
> And a huge thank you to anyone who patiently waited for updates! The support I've had for this has been amazing. Thank you for reading, if you read it, and enjoy! 
> 
> I dedicate this fic to SPN episode 15x18   
> xox

The hours dragged by, slow and agonizing, with no further contact from Crowley and no news about Jess and the baby.

When it became so late at night that it was clear nothing more would be achieved, Dean put his foot down. Sammy was slumped over his desk in the deep, exhausted sleep of one so emotionally drained that they simply dropped. His head was pillowed on his folded arms, and his face was pinched and unhappy even in rest. Dean hadn’t left him alone, not once; he hadn’t even taken his hands from Sam’s back, just stayed sitting close by, as he tried to provide some comfort.

At 2am, Dean stood and stretched his stiff muscles, blinking hard to try and wake himself up. He wandered about the desks looking for Henriksen, trying not to disturb his colleagues, be they resting too or hunched over their computers, trawling CCTV for any sign of vehicles or men associated with the Novak family’s rival.

Henriksen was in his office, looking defeated and worn out, though he tried for a comforting smile with Dean slipped in through the door.

“I’m taking my brother home,” Dean told him without preamble. “He needs a proper sleep, a shower, some food. Call me the second you hear anything?”

Henriksen nodded his understanding and reached out to clap Dean’s shoulder.

“Will you be able to convince him to go?”

Dean shrugged. “Going to have to. He has to rest.”

Sam, when Dean roused him, put up a fight, begging his older brother to let him stay.

“No,” Dean used his big brother voice, putting as much authority into the word as he could. “We’re going home. You need a good sleep in a proper bed.”

The Novak’s had taken over the briefing room; Michael, who sat at the head of the conference table, hadn’t taken his phone away from his ear the whole night. Who he was talking too was a mystery, and his brothers left a radius around him and his intense conversation. Cas pored over a laptop, his brother Raphael looming over his shoulder, their heads inclined together as they whispered over whatever it was that they were looking at on the screen.

The mob family hadn’t paid any of the detectives mind all night, not until Dean bullied his brother into standing and started hustling him from the building, passing the briefing room without a second glance as he did so. But when Michael spotted them leaving, he pulled his phone away from his ear and held his hand over the mouthpiece in order to utter a few commands to Castiel, who nodded and was coming out of the room after the Winchesters in half a heartbeat.

“You’re taking Sam somewhere? Michael would like it known that it would be his preference for you both to remain here.”

“Well unfortunately for Michael, I don’t give a crap about his preferences,” Dean replied, trying to keep the anger from his tone, one arm wound around his brother’s waist. Sam was quiet, his eyes on Cas. Dean’s heart was lodged in his throat, constricting it with his fury, as he looked up at the sadness and uncertainty on his brother’s face.

“I don’t take orders from Michael and I sure as hell don’t need his permission to come and go from my own place of work,” Dean carried on, fixing his eyes on Michael through the glass wall of the room as he spoke.

Cas took a deep breath, the way he always did when he was trying to keep himself calm, and Dean felt another spike of rage up his spine that Cas would dare to even think that he had the right to be angry with Dean.

“It really is for the best if you remain here with me,” Cas insisted, tone low and slow, like he was trying to convince a child. It only enraged Dean more.

“Best for who? For Michael? For you? ‘Cos it isn’t what’s best for Sam, and you’re a fucking idiot if you think _anyone_ is ever more important to me than him!”

Cas raised his chin, blue eyes glinting with anger even as they narrowed in hurt.

“Duly noted. I understand your feelings perfectly. It’s an awful situation and we’re doing all that we can to rectify it.”

“Yeah, ‘cos it’s your fucking fault!” Dean howled, and it was Sam’s turn to grip his shoulders to try to comfort him.

“Dean, calm down.”

“Yes. Yes, it’s my fault,” Cas agreed, throwing his hands up. “I failed my brothers, and I failed you. Jessica and Mary were targeted because of their link to me. So now I want to make it right. And I can’t do that if you make yourselves unsafe.”

“Oh, yeah, because being close to you, a mafia enforcer or hitman or assassin or whatever the fuck you are has worked out _so well_ for me so far! You’re just so _trustworthy_.”

“You were always safe with me,” Cas told him quietly. “You were never in any danger from me. You know that. You wouldn’t be wearing my ring otherwise.”

Dean unconsciously ran his thumb over the underside of it, refusing to be shamed.

“Except for the time where you had written instructions to kill me?” he spat, needing the upper hand back.

“That was only if I discovered any evidence you and the FBI knew about us! I don’t just walk around killing people indiscriminately!”

“Who says the FBI didn’t know! Who says I didn’t! It’s hardly first-date-worthy conversation material! You spent a few hours with me and somehow knew everything about my work?! Impossible!”

“I hacked your laptop and read your encrypted files once you were asleep,” Cas shrugged like it was obvious, like it was no big deal, like it was nothing that he’d located Dean’s work laptop – hidden in the back of his wardrobe in a locked briefcase – and read through confidential files. “It didn’t take long to rule out that your team had some information, yes, but not enough to be of concern to us. You were ruled out as being any sort of danger to my family.”

“Should have fucked you harder, obviously,” Dean spat, not missing the way Cas’ jaw clenched and forgetting Sam’s existence entirely. “If I’d worn you out properly, you wouldn’t have been able to out-play me.”

Because Dean remembered that night so clearly. How could he forget?

He’d taken Cas home after he’d met him in the bar, thinking his cover was safe and secure and what was one night, anyway? Dean had tried to convince himself that he wasn’t already hooked on Cas’ eyes, the timbre of his voice, the way he smiled. They’d fallen into Dean’s bed and he’d realised he wasn’t fooling himself at all.

Nothing would ever wipe the resulting memory away; Cas had been so beautiful, the way he’d writhed in Dean’s arms. His spiky hair, which had grown longer since then, had stood out ink-black against the white pillow. His pale skin had gone pink and flush with pleasure as his cries of delight had filled Dean’s ears. When he came, his hands had clenched on Dean’s shoulders, fingernails marking crescents into his skin, his face the picture of pleasure as Dean had stroked him in time with his own helpless thrusts.

“No, you did a pretty good job,” Cas smiled, and Sam pointedly cleared his throat.

“I know you two have a lot to work through,” Sam’s voice was strained with tension. “But can we focus?”

“Of course,” Cas turned to him, all politeness once more. They both ignored Dean’s pointed grumble of, “ _I_ can.”

“You’re safer here than anywhere else,” Cas carried on, and Dean was opening his mouth to argue when one of Cas’ brothers, the tall, ginger-haired one, popped his head around the briefing room door.

“Michael’s finally got Crowley on the line. He promises that Mrs. Winchester and the little one are both fine. He’s willing to make a trade.”

Sam went limp with relief so quickly that Dean had to get his shoulder under him to prop him up. Cas reached out too and wrapped a hand around Sam’s elbow to help guide him into the briefing room to sit down, as the ginger-haired brother scurried off to alert Henriksen and the rest of the team.

Michael eyed them, face expressionless, phone still clamped to his ear. He seemed to be listening to someone on the other line, and as Henriksen barrelled into the room at a run, Michael’s eyes narrowed in displeasure before he ended his call without a word.

“What does he want in exchange?” Henriksen demanded, pacing about with his hands on his hips. Jody sat down on Sam’s other side and Charlie lingered behind them, her face fraught with worry.

It took so long for Michael to answer that Dean had thought he wouldn’t.

“He wants several things, some of which he will receive, and some of which he will not.”

“What do you mean he won’t!” Dean bristled. “If Jess and the baby’s safety depends on it, he can have the fucking moon if he asks for it!”

“Mother and child will be safely recovered and returned. I have told you this, Dean, plenty of times,” Michael cut him off.

“Yeah, you’re just dying to be believed.”

“Winchester! Shut it!” Henriksen was pissed at him, but Dean was past caring.

“They-” Dean started to jab a finger in Michael’s direction, but Cas grabbed his hand and lowered it back to rest on the tabletop.

“Dean. Please,” Cas’ murmur was both reproachful and comforting, all at once.

“What will it take for him to let them go safely?” Sam begged, drawing attention back to what really mattered.

“The deal will be struck, and the debt paid, you needn’t worry.”

“I’m beyond worried! This is my wife, my _daughter_! They’re not bargaining chips! And they aren’t your collateral!”

Dean reached for him again, but Sam threw him off and stood to stride from the room, too agitated to wait for a reply from the Novak leader.

“Sam’s nerves are shot to shit. When we finally get our asses into gear and move in, he’s sitting out. He’ll be more of a hindrance than a help if he’s allowed a free reign,” Henriksen insisted, as Dean jumped up to follow his brother.

Dean found him in their office, in the middle of another round of frustrated tears. He was patting helplessly at Sam’s shaking shoulders when Cas appeared in the doorway.

“They’ve given a meeting place, an old warehouse. We’re ready to move when you are.”

Sam was on his feet before Dean could say anything, and Cas waited for Dean to precede him out of the room.

*

The drive seemed to take a lifetime. Dean kept the pedal on the floor, one hand gripping Impala 2.0’s wheel, the other clenched in Sam’s.

“Gonna get them back,” he murmured to his little brother, for what felt like the hundredth time. Sam didn’t respond, his face tight with worry and his eyes unfocused, fixed on the road ahead without seeing it.

Sam only roused himself once Dean had screeched the imposter Impala to a halt behind a SWAT van and a carload of Novak brothers at the designated site a few blocks from the warehouse precinct. When Dean looked over to check on him, Sam was already watching him, and Dean squeezed his hand once more.

“I’m going to get them.”

“I know you will, Dean.”

Everyone assembled in clusters around the support vehicles. Crowley knew they were there, probably, but that didn’t really matter. Henriksen went over the plan again; Michael and several of his brothers would make contact with Crowley at the drop point. The FBI would support the remaining Novaks in infiltrating the hopefully largely empty warehouse to retrieve the hostages. Crowley’s boys, who called themselves the Demons, were expected to be busy backing up their King.

“Junior, you’re staying here,” Henriksen’s voice was gentle, and Sam nodded his acceptance. Dean was immensely proud of him and his composure in that instant; his own self-control felt miniscule and as if it hung from a very fine thread.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Michael agreed, from where he and his brothers were waiting, before his eyes went to Dean. “I’d like to request that Dean also remains with the support vehicles.”

“Wait, what? No. No way, man. That’s my sister-in-law and my niece! I _need_ to get them.”

“Quite frankly, what you need doesn’t interest me. A wrong was committed against civilians, in an attempt to get to me and my family. I am correcting it.”

“I have got to get that baby girl.”

“You do not.”

Dean gritted his teeth, but Michael cut him off.

“You are no less emotionally compromised than your brother. You’re also significantly more stupid.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Sam wasn’t the target.” Michael was calm, cold. “Cas was. You were. They got what would affect Sam most because that would affect _you_ most because that would affect Castiel most. This was another hit at Cas, through you. This time, a vulnerable woman and child, instead of a car. So, you _are_ going to sit this out, your people are going to retrieve the hostages, and _we_ are going to make Crowley pay. Because Cas needs to make it right and he can’t do that if he’s panicking over you and your safety.”

From the back of his mob of brothers, Cas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His eyes, tense and unhappy, were trained on the back of Michael’s head, but he didn’t refute what his brother was saying. It only made Dean angrier, and he felt his face twist in rage, his lip curling as he snarled at Michael.

“Listen here, asshole. I am going and getting Jessica and Mary. I can do it with your boys; I can even take a back seat and let y’all run the show. But I am getting my niece the hell out of there and away from all of you bastards, and I sure as hell don’t need your blessing to do so! You have absolutely no authority over me.”

Henriksen stepped in, raising a hand in placation to Michael before he gave Dean’s back a pat.

“Winchester, when he’s not mouthing off like an ego-maniac, is the best I have. If any of us are going to walk out of that warehouse with Jessica and Mary, it’s him.”

Michael opened his mouth, but Cas moved forward and grabbed his arm, forcing his brother to look at him. Michael shrugged Cas away, scowling, and all the brothers seemed to retreat a few steps under the strength of his gaze, even though it wasn’t directed at them.

But Cas was firm. “Michael I’m not coming with you to the drop. I’m going with Dean. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, I’m going to be with him.”

“No.”

“Yes. Michael, three years ago you gave me an assignment, a target to track down, a mark with a life to infiltrate. You wanted me to do that to protect you. 24 hours after I made contact with him you told me to make my choice. And I did. And now I’m choosing Dean again. I will never not choose Dean. I’m protecting him and I’m choosing him.”

“It’s because of Dean that this has happened!”

“It’s because of you! It’s because of you, and our family, and what you’ve turned me into! Crowley has struck in the worst possible way to hurt me by hurting the one I love. He’s taken an innocent woman and a baby, because that’s unfathomable, unbearable agony to Samuel and in turn it’s _killing_ Dean. And that is on _you_. Not me, not him. You. You’ve made me into your soldier, had me battle your wars, and for what? To lose the man I love, to have the heartbreak of his brother’s wife and daughter being kidnapped drive us further apart? Everything that affects him affects me too! You’ve hemmed me in well, Michael, but you cannot possibly think that I will not allow it!”

“Look, that’s enough,” Henriksen stepped between the two with his hands raised, while Dean gaped at Cas, his heart lodged in the back of his mouth.

“You can point all the fingers you like once Jessica and Mary are secured and safe,” Henriksen carried on. “Let’s focus!”

“Let him go, if he wants to go,” Raphael told Michael, as everyone drifted away to start gearing up. “You’ve asked much of him, all these years, and he’s done everything you ever wanted. But you must listen to him now. Let him go to retrieve the civilians, and I’ll go with him as an added protection.”

“Come, whoever’s coming, we haven’t got all day,” Dean barked, trying not to show how badly he cared, how much he needed Cas to be with him every step of the way, forever.

He headed over to the armoury van and pulled on his SWAT gear. Cas joined him after a few seconds, and Dean quietly helped him and Raphael dress in the same gear. Sammy tried to help but kept fumbling the buckles with how badly his hands were shaking.

“It’s alright, Junior. I got it,” Jody stepped in and fixed up Raphael’s vest, then his helmet.

“We’re nearly there, Sammy. Nearly time,” Dean injected as much bravado and cheer as he could into his voice, and Sam nodded, his face wan.

Ten minutes later, when everyone was in position, and Cas had finished trading glares with Michael, Dean stood up on his toes to press a kiss to his little brother’s temple.

“Just hold on a little longer. Then I swear I will never let anything, not a single goddamn thing, ever happen to you again.”

“I know, Dean, it’s going to be OK.” The trust, the conviction, the faith, as ever, rang clear in Sam’s voice.

“I love you,” Dean told him, and Sam even managed a tight smile, eyes softening for a moment.

“I know that too.”

*

In the end, it happened quick, allegedly. It sure didn't feel like it at the time though, and Dean was shocked to be told days later he’d only been in the warehouse for about ten minutes.

Michael and most of his brothers confronted Crowley, and it had descended into a shoot-out almost instantly. The rivalry was so bitter that there was really no other course, but Dean still anxiously watched Cas’ tight expressions as they huddled outside the warehouse doors, listening to the gunfire through their earpieces.

Charlie and Jody had made the first break inside with their teams and were scouting ahead, securing the first half of the warehouse before the rest of the FBI rolled in.

Dean hunkered at the corner of the warehouse door, listening to the gunshots and shouts ringing out from inside as those inside neutralized the guards and called clear on the rooms. Cas hovered just behind him with his arm curved along Dean’s spine protectively. Dean wanted to reach back to touch him, to take a split second to revel in being in Cas’ presence again, to turn off all the noise in his head and pretend for a minute that their relationship wasn’t balanced on a precipice right now, and it wasn’t fight or flight.

He shot a quick look at Cas over his shoulder and got a tight smile back.

Sam was waiting two blocks back at the support vehicles, probably pacing and clutching at his hair in agitation, under Henriksen’s watchful eye. Dean’s baby brother came first right now. The rest could all be sorted out later.

Jody’s voice crackled over the comm line, reporting that most of the building was clear, that the two teams were easily incapacitating Crowley’s men, and that Dean could move in with his team of Cas, Raphael, Jo and Kevin.

“Let me take point,” Cas said, as they moved out of their crouching positions. “It’s safer for you.”

“None of this is safe, Angel,” Dean murmured, but he stood back to let Cas take the lead like he wanted, too tense to argue.

They swept the building easily, guns cradled but not needed, dodging around Jody’s team as they led swearing, struggling men out in cuffs.

“Fuck you, Novak scumbags!” one man spat in Cas’ face as he was dragged past, but Cas ignored him completely. His swearing cut off with a muffled grunt when the butt of Jo’s gun slammed into his belly as she passed.

“Slipped,” she shrugged when Dean shot her a look over his shoulder.

They moved quickly through the cleared areas, with no need to linger.

“Still haven’t located Jess and Mary,” Charlie murmured through Dean’s earpiece, nervous.

“We will,” Dean insisted, as they moved through the main room and down a cleared corridor. He was being reminded so forcibly of when he’d recovered Cas in the Masters’ warehouse all those months ago, and it wasn’t a happy memory.

A few of Crowley’s goons had pressed back and barricaded themselves in the last few rooms of the building, taking shots at them from around corners and doorways, but Cas made quick work of them with barely a blink. The other FBI teams had cleared all but three back rooms, and Jessica and the baby were in the last one, unguarded and alone.

When Cas kicked the locked door open Dean ran straight in, even as the woman inside screamed and huddled over the baby in her arms, shielding the infant with her body.

“Jessica? Jessica!”

She was shivering, and on Dean’s first proper look at her, his heart turned to ice. Then he blinked and realised the red and pink marks on her cream dress, which had looked to him like bloodstains, were simply its floral pattern. She was unharmed.

The dress no match for the frigid air of the room, though, and she was shaking, having dropped a blanket from her shoulders to grab the baby. The room was sparsely furnished with a single bed made up with clean sheets, and a cot and change table for the baby.

Dean rushed to his sister-in-law even though she cringed away from him and crouched down at her side to drape his SWAT jacket over her shoulders.

“Sam’s outside, Jessica, it’s OK. You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out of here right now.”

“Dean?” she whispered, her blue eyes wide with hope.

“Yeah, sweetheart, it’s me. You’re OK now, we’re here, Sam’s just outside.”

“He’s not hurt? He’s alright? They… when they… when they came to the house, they were looking for him, they haven’t stopped asking about him!” Even as she spoke, she pitched herself forward onto his chest, relief making her body slump against his.

“He’s fine, safe and sound, just beside himself about you and this little one.” Dean ran a hand over Mary’s head, admiring despite himself her soft hair, the gold curls.

“Did they hurt you in any way? Threaten you, or the baby?” Cas asked from somewhere above Dean.

“No. I’ve barely even seen any of them.” Jessica was still trembling against Dean’s shoulder and he rubbed at her back.

“Everything’s fine now. They can’t get to you now.”

“I just want to go home!” Jessica started to cry then, and Dean’s heart sank. She must have been so scared for so long but would have forced herself to remain strong and calm for her daughter. Now that salvation and safety had come her defences had crumbled. She looked tired and pale, had probably barely slept from fear.

Murmuring to her, Dean gently lifted his niece from her arms and tucked her little body to him. Mary was quiet, but she looked clean and warm enough in her onesie. Sam’s hazel eyes gazed back at him almost solemnly.

“Hi, little one. I’m your Uncle Dean,” he told her, though she simply continued to stare at him. When Dean stood with Mary cradled to his chest, Cas helped Jessica to stand.

Jody reported that the building was all clear and they were safe to leave.

But Jessica’s legs seemed not able to support her weight, and after helping her stumble to the door, Cas quietly asked if she would be OK with him carrying her. She nodded and seemed to drop completely as he hoisted her up easily in his arms. Raphael, who had been impassive and silent the whole time, took point again as the group scurried from the room.

Mary grizzled a little once they left the cell, so Dean propped her on his shoulder so she could see her mother just behind her.

“It’s OK, Junior Junior. Mama’s right there, and Uncle Dean’s got you now.”

“Junior Junior?” Jessica asked.

“Uh… Yeah,” Dean turned to grin at her over his shoulder; she was slumped against Cas’ chest as he carried her, looking ready to fall asleep. “We sometimes call Sam ‘Junior’ at the office because it gets too confusing when the boss is screaming ‘Winchester’ every five seconds. So, I figure this one is Junior Junior.”

Jessica managed a smile for him before she put her head down on Cas’ shoulder and closed her eyes.

It was jarring, getting back out into the fresh night air, and both Mary and Jessica were still blinking in the bright flashing lights from the cruisers parked outside when Sam came sprinting to them. He took Jessica from Raphael and collapsed to his knees with her cradled in his lap, sobbing in relief into her hair.

“They’re both fine, completely unharmed,” Dean said as he knelt next to Sam to show him the baby. He didn’t comment on the psychological trauma Jess was undoubtedly experiencing, but physically they were both OK.

“Thank God,” Sam gasped, reaching for his daughter, and Dean lowered her into his waiting arms.

Dean stood up and backed away then, leaving his brother to his family, not wanting to intrude.

Nearby, Henriksen was filling Cas in on what had transpired with the Novak’s confrontation with Crowley. Raphael had already disappeared.

“Your brother said you were to return to him as soon as you could,” Henriksen was saying, shooting a long glance at Dean over Cas’ shoulder.

“I imagine he would want that, yes,” was all Cas said, before he was turning away. Then he was in front of Dean, and his eyes said everything.

“You’re not going back to Michael, are you?” Dean croaked; his heart was thumping so loud that he could feel the blood pulsing in his ears.

“No. I’m not going back to him, or our brothers, or that life, or any of it. I told him. I warned him. I’m choosing you. I just want you,” Cas said it with so much conviction that it brought tears to Dean’s eyes.

“Is he just going to let you go peacefully? And even if he does, what will you do? Or was the teaching qualification real after all?”

Cas laughed, then shook his head. “Ah, no. I have no idea what I’ll do. But whatever it is, I’ll be with you. If you still want me, that is.”

“Always,” Dean told him, thrilling at the smile it brought to Cas’ face. “I haven’t forgiven you yet. I’ve been trying to adjust to hearing my life the past three years was built on lies. I haven’t been able to, on my own. I need answers. And I need you. I’ve tried to stop loving you, but I’m led to believe that’s impossible.”

“I never lied about how I felt about you. I lied about who I was to the outside world, what I did all day, the horrid things I’ve done…God, what I’ve done…” Cas looked away and took a deep breath before he carried on. “But I fell in love with you the moment I met you and who I am when I’m with you has always been _me_.”

Dean kissed him because he didn’t have enough words in his vocabulary to explain how he felt in return.

“Come home?” he whispered instead against Cas’ lips when they pulled apart. “The rest… we’ll work it all out as we go.”

Cas nodded his agreement and smiled gently when Dean brushed back a bit of his hair from his eyes. Then he caught Dean’s hand and examined the ring.

“It suits you. I knew it would.”

“Yours does too,” Dean felt almost smugly satisfied, as he watched the interchanging bands of black and rose gold metal on Cas’ finger glint in the glare of the streetlights. “If you like, I can actually propose properly with it.”

“Does it matter?” Cas shrugged, as they handed back their SWAT gear to the inventory leader and started their trek back to the Impala 2.0.

Dean supposed it didn’t. It was perhaps a little redundant now; the past few months had stripped their relationship back from all the lies and falsehoods, but his love for Cas felt as strong and simple as ever.

He shot a look at Sam over his shoulder as he and Cas walked away. His brother was back on his feet and was holding his daughter up over his head, cooing to her. Jessica smiled and waved to Dean, even as a paramedic started to fuss over her, and Dean waved back.

“How soon until Michael comes after us,” Dean dared to ask Cas, once they’d climbed into the Impala.

Cas shook his head. “He won’t. I’ve made my position clear.”

“And you trust him?”

“He’s my brother.”

Dean huffed a little, not fully convinced.

“If anything else I own gets blown up, I know who to call, I guess.”

“That won’t happen!” Cas laughed, looking over at him fondly as Dean put the car in reverse and headed back to the road.

“Just saying… I don’t think the sort of life that you’ve lived is one that you can just choose to walk away from.”

“It doesn’t matter how hard the adjustment is. As long as I have you.”

“That you do,” Dean confirmed, revelling in the warmth Cas’ smile sent through him.

Nothing had changed and everything had changed, all at once. It was going to be easy to work through some things, and nearly impossible to address others. But Cas was here with him and willing to try, and Dean didn’t think he’d ever loved him more.

“It’s a good thing you’re finally coming home. I think all the plants are dead and also there’s no food in the house and I don’t know how to pay the water bill.”

Cas rolled his eyes at the heavens. “You killed my Ficus tree?”

“I didn’t _kill_ it. It died. I had nothing to do with it-”

“Dean! You’re buying a new one!”

“Sure thing, Angel. Whatever you want.”

Cas settled back against his seat with a huff, but he reached for Dean’s hand and tangled their fingers together, and Dean finally felt like he was home at last.

The house was dark and quiet when he parked in the driveway, and he arched his back when he got out of the car, let the tension lift from his shoulders.

Cas was already tapping in the code for the front door and flicking on the sitting room light. The primroses in their flowerboxes on the porch had all gone to seed, and Cas glanced at them as he reached a hand back for Dean.

Dean took it, let the long fingers wrap around his once more, stroked his thumb over Cas’ knuckles.

“They’ll grow back,” Cas gestured with his chin to the green shoots.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cas grinned, as he pulled Dean into their home.


End file.
